You're in the club so late your limbs have melted into sweaty spaghetti. You could collapse from exhaustion, but the lights and fog and music keep you afloat. The Snow Strippers' songs are all about evoking that terrifying state of perpetual climax. Like 100 gecs and Frost Children, the Detroit duo carry on the hipster tradition of reinventing and rewiring the rejected pass. Their focus: bleak, cheap EDM pop. Their music is called electroclash, but it's more like electroshine: vocal electronica overclocked to a sharp and peaky point.
Singer Tatiana Schwaninger and Graham Perez, a producer with a previous life making beats for underground rappers like SoFaygo, have been working as Snow Strippers for two years. This spring April Mixtape 3 is like a Dance Dance Revolution soundtrack to moonwalking cyborgs: a mind-boggling blaze of neon melodies and tiny screams. Their music sounds beautiful in a fun re-evaluation of Crystal Castles and viral hits like laura les “Haunted,” but they also enjoyed mutating their core sound in interesting ways, like mashing vocals with robotic ad-libs or slowing down the tempo to a shimmering stomp-trot. On the duo's new EP Night Killaz Vol. 1they flesh out their fancy dance sound even further, showcasing the music's overheated thrills as well as its diminishing returns.
Snow Strippers' music is a piñata of pastiches, modeled after the gothic angst of SALEM, the creepy mayhem of Crystal Castles and the camp heart of DJ Sammy. But it's also seamlessly and stupidly fun. Even the neurotic genre purists who chide PinkPantheress for grinding out classic UK garage will be swept away by the Snow Strippers' tidal wave of hardcore kicks and pleading vocals. Firing up with a blinding shock, “Just Your Doll” will whip anyone within blast radius into a frenzy. “Preemptive” throttles like a sizzling Cascada song, Schwaninger's sun-drenched screams rippling like she's running from an evil monster. At its best, the music oozes with the greasy pizza of 3am.
The thing is, the Snow Strippers have nowhere else to go. They came up with one powerful idea — but only one. After the hypnotic first half, the film fades into a hazy locked groove. The lightshow compositions of “Just a Hint” and “Touching Yours” sound exhaustingly similar, and Schwaninger's vocals dissolve into a shiny-silver blur. Even “Comin Down” offers no reprieve from the attack. Where the original electroclass scene developed sly humor and sharp imagery against the welcoming mainstream club cultures of the time, this music doesn't rebel against anything. The duo seem to have little to say, an artistic manifesto that boils down to: It's laughter, it's euphoria, let's light up in a dark road. But when it stops being fun, the music turns into a rave-by-rote travesty.
