Indie electronic music duo These Girls Are Electric — Harris (vocals, organ, piano, synths, guitar, bass and sound design) and Zeno (vocals. guitars. bass, synths and sound design) — can trace the origins of their project back several decades: The longtime friends from Stuttgart began recording music in their bedrooms as teenagers in the 1980s. The duo cut their teeth in the local underground scene, playing in several bands in their youth including My Nature, First Approach, The B’Captains and Die Frohe Bootsfahrt among others.
Their early sound can be described as a melancholic blend of New Wave, synth pop, and underground music that was strange but frequently catchy. And over the years. they worked closely with several local musical heroes.
For the better part of the past two decades, the pair would meet at Musikladen Studio — a place packed with vintage synths, dusty guitars and humming computers, where time seemed to fold in on itself. During improvised sessions that they’ve dubbed “magnetic sessions,” the German duo would create raw, intuitive song sketches. Then they would start production: Selected material is reassembled without losing the original feel. Recordings from their “magnetic sessions” are re-edited, sorted and integrated into thee songs to preserve as much of the studio session feeling as possible.
As These Girls Are Electric, the German duo’s sound is a blend of electronica, lo-fi pop, post-punk and experimental soundscapes. Lyrically, the duo’s work revolves around love, hate, space, philosophy and the search for a lost universe — or a paradise that may have never existed. In their world, artificial intelligences meet broken hearts, cyborgs conjure childhood memories and stardust cigarette light tells stories of humanity in transition. Each song within their catalog is part of a multi-voiced narrative about life in a post-human world and the search for meaning, connection and renewal.
Last month I wrote about the broodingly atmospheric “Ghost In The Bottle.” The duo’s latest single “One Day” strikes me as being a bit of a blend of Public Service Broadcasting and Joy Division/Interpol-like post punk that showcases the German duo’s ability to craft cinematic and broodingly atmospheric material with catchy hooks and anthemic choruses that give the song a reflective yet urgent feel.
The duo explain that “‘One Day’ explores inner struggle, fading ideals and the search for meaning through cryptic, surreal imagery. The refrain ‘This is our day‘ captures a quiet sense of resilience, balancing melancholy with hope.”