Home > Columbus Music > CD Review > Ghostland Observatory, 'Robotique Majestique'

Backstory: From the ashes of their earlier band Waking Helix, Texas natives Aaron Kyle Behrens and Thomas Ross Turner have formed a bizarro hybrid of synthetic pop and protracted rawk. And after three straight homemade efforts, including this noisy exercise, manufactured in their Austin studio and disseminated via their own label Trashy Moped Recordings, they've accumulated street cred and hot press to spare.

Why you should care: If you fiend for big-floor beats delivered out the back end of a rack of samplers, synths, amps and pedals, then Ghostland Observatory is the band for you. Plus, they're not all about recreating the electro-soul of Tom Tom Club and Prince or the robot techno of Daft Punk: they like to meld it with the hair-metal vocal acrobatics of Dio and Iron Maiden for good measure. Behrens' anthemic pipes can blow your eardrums, while Turner's repetitive digital atmospheres could make Hal 9000 go mad all over again.

Verdict: Behrens is quite the frontman: sporting pigtails like Willie Nelson and screaming raw like Freddie Mercury, his caffeinated vocals on the supercharged "HFM" or the manic stomp of "No Place for Me" are as addictive as heroin. He can leapfrog from punk to pop without a pause. But the simplicity of the retro-electro sound sometimes confines him, especially on derivative tracks like "Dancing on My Grave" or "Freeheart Lover." Hey, even mighty machines miss a subroutine or two.

X-Factor: Ghostland has teamed up with Hugh Hefner to design a series of T-shirts for Playboy.

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