Debut single from new Swedish electronic outfit time. It’s ‘Buckle Up’ by Rainmode. Or Henrik Skanfors and Martin Alexandersson as they’re known to their mates.
This one caught our imagination as soon as we heard it. It’s pretty instant, and the instant feeling that comes to your head is “yeah, this is really quite good, this”. It’s got a touch of the Röyksopp about it. Röyksopp when they’re being upbeat and quirky. ‘Buckle Up’ is certainly upbeat, in both its production and its melody (oh, and in that intensely amazing instrumental outro). But it’s also quite melancholic too. So it’s one of those songs that gives you the happy sads.
We asked the Rainmode chaps to give us their own take on this happy/sads syndrome within ‘Buckle Up’. “In a lot of ways, ‘Buckle Up’ illustrates the theme of our upcoming album very well. It’s about the crash-and-burns in our lives. Falling. How it hurts, but also how it cleanses. The duality. This track describes a two-faced, sort of bipolar relationship. How fast you can travel from a state of total love to absolute hate in a matter of seconds”. We think they’ve explained that pretty well.
But who ARE Rainmode? “Me and Martin wrote our first track together last year. At that point Martin came from being a DJ (Alec Sonite) and loving deep house, and I had just released my third album in the singer/songwriter-genre. But it only took a couple of tracks until we understood each other completely. And the idea of actually starting a project was born. And the result is almost pompous electronica/pop”.
Here’s ‘Buckle Up’. We love that they call it “almost pompous”. It’s out now and has been released outside of Sweden too.
