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 levitating. Snow Strippers songs are based solely on evoking this tremulous state of perpetual climax. Like 100 gecs and Frost Children, the Detroit duo continues in the hipster tradition of rediscovering and rewiring the discarded passé. Their focus: lurid, cheap-sounding EDM pop. Their music’s been called electroclash, but it’s more like electroflash: vocal electronica overclocked to a shrill and peaky breaking point.
Vocalist Tatiana Schwaninger and Graham Perez, a producer with a past life making beats for underground rappers like SoFaygo, have worked as Snow Strippers for a couple years now. This spring’s breakout April Mixtape 3 is like a Dance Dance Revolution soundtrack for moonwalking cyborgs: a strobing blitz of neon melodies and tinny shrieks. Their music slots nicely into a zeitgeist of Crystal Castles reappreciation and viral hits like laura les’ “Haunted,” but they also took pleasure in mutating their core sound in intriguing ways, like mashing the vocals with robotic ad-libs or slowing the pace to a glistening stomp-trot. On the duo’s new EP Night Killaz Vol. 1, they juice their garish dance sound even more, showcasing the music’s overheated thrills as well as its diminishing returns.
Snow Strippers’ music is a piñata of pastiche, modeled after the gothic unease of SALEM, the shivering chaos of Crystal Castles, and the campy heart-rush of DJ Sammy. But it’s also seamless and stupidly fun. Even neurotic genre purists who scold PinkPantheress for trilling over UK garage classics will get swept up by Snow Strippers’ tidal wave of hardstyle kicks and pleading vocals. Detonating with a blinding shock, “Just Your Doll” will whip anyone in blast radius into a frenzy. “Cautious” throttles like a deep-fried Cascada song, Schwaninger’s helium-high cries fluttering like’s she running from an evil monster. At its best, the music smacks with the greasy goodness of 3 a.m. pizza.
The issue is that Snow Strippers don’t have anywhere else to go. They landed on one strong idea—but only one. After the hypnotic first half, the tape fizzles out into a hazy locked groove. The lightshow synths of “Just a Hint” and “Touching Yours” sound exhaustingly similar, and Schwaninger’s vocals dissolve into a shiny-silver blur. Even “Comin Down” doesn’t offer a reprieve from the onslaught. Where the original electroclash scene deployed snarky humor and prurient imagery against the cushy mainstream club cultures of the time, this music isn’t rebelling against anything. The duo seems to have little to say, an artistic manifesto that boils down to: It’s a laugh, it’s euphoric, let’s get lit on a dark street. But when it stops being fun, the music turns into a rave-by-rote charade.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
