“Hello Hello” is a rather slamming track by Swedish solo synth artist Lars Falk, off his debut release Through (1983), who was at one point the vocalist for the long-running senimal Swedish dark synth group Twice A Man, who I believe are still active to this day. Like many smaller, independent electronic releases from this time period, it’s all been given a retrospective boost of interest following the rise of artists working in the minimal synth, darkwave and general underground electronic new wave genres back in the 2010s — mainly credited to sharing music through blogs on the internet as well as a given number of labels starting re-issues around that time, including the titular Minimal Wave label as well as a host of endless others.
Most readers who have landed here — on the site of Soft Riot — will probably be well familiar with this scene, its background and many of the un-earthed gems that have been given a new life over the past decade or two. This particular track I’ve heard on dancefloors at numerous and current underground festivals that work in that general scope of genre. Overall, much like many tracks in this style, is based on one pattern that works out into a trance-y loop, with a pumping, simple drum pattern and bassline, overlaid with the melodic vocals of Falk whose lyrics are what most would perceive as thinly veiled allegories to, well, “sexual activity”. As Through was a small cassette release, likely recorded by the artist in a home studio or small recording studio, the somewhat lo-fi nature of the recording sort of works to the track’s advantage, giving it a nice smushed feel likely due to the generous amount of tape compression, as well as a vibe that is somewhat “DIY punk” in nature.
However, the most interesting feature about this track — which is mainly why I’m writing about it here — is that around the 3m20s mark of the track (and the YouTube video above) there’s a break in the music and then it kicks back again, albeit in a slightly different key and possibly even from an alternate recording session. The frequencies where the instrumentation lies gets re-shuffled around, which is a bit of a surprise when you first listen to it, even through all of those lo-fi audio artifacts. This studio “trick” (or accident?) can also be found in the track “Memories” by Public Image Limited, from their 1979 Metal Box album (also known as Second Edition for further releases of that album that did not come in the original cylindrical metal box canister), albeit without the key change — just the EQ-ing aspect — on a considerably more “hi-fi” recording.