<<In the interest of full disclosure, Ganymede is signed to Ninthwave
Records, a label that I own.  David Friede and Patrick Runkle sent me a CD-R
with eight songs on it and asked if I would be interested in putting them
out (they had picked up the Gary Flanagan CD and liked the idea of what Gary
was doing).  I took a listen and realized that I really liked what they were
doing.  It was a classic synthpop sound alright, but not Depeche Mode or
even Gary's 1981 sound, but rather a few years later: a mid-'80s sound that
songs like "West End Girls" and "Living In a Box" made popular.  So yeah,
I'm biased, but then I've never been neutral about music.  "After The Fall"
is their first release.>>

We're in a car headed to the Summer Synthpop Festival at the Black Cat in
Washington D.C., and Patrick and David -- a.k.a. Ganymede -- have just come
into town to see the show.  Get these two talking about the mid-'80s, and
you might want to change your plans for the evening.

"I think a crowning moment of my life is when my mom took me to see 'Baby -
Secret of the Lost Legend' in 1985," said Pat.

David and Patrick are fans of the late '70s and early '80s the way only
people too young to have actually lived through the whole period are.

"The aesthetic of that time is something very special and it left a deep,
deep impression," Pat said.  "There was always something better on the
horizon, technology was going to solve all our problems, and -- best of all
-- the opportunities for geeks from the suburbs were limitless."

"I'm a huge fan of Russell Mulcahy, the guy who did Highlander," said David.
  "I was looking at a Duran Duran video collection one day when I was in
high school and realized he had directed many of their videos, so I bought
the tape.  After watching the videos a couple of times, I began to notice
the music and realized that I really liked it too."  David spent his spare
time catching up, getting his hands on as many classic synthpop albums as he
could.

Of course, the good times didn't last.

"Suddenly, I looked around and the theater I saw 'Baby' and 'Explorers' in
was getting torn down and replaced by a budget gas station," Pat said.  "The
mom and pop video store I grew up in closed down.  Atrocities like
'Armageddon' made $200 million at the box office and the Pet Shop Boys were
doing things like 'Bilingual.'  As Neil says on that album, 'Time was
running out; something had to be done.'"

As we approach the Black Cat, I notice Pat has on an Adidas T-Shirt and a
pair of parachute pants.  "You don't know how hard it is to find a good pair
of parachute pants these days," he says.

Dave and Pat, both Pennsylvanians, had met in college in Los Angeles and
decided it would be cool to record some music together.

"We didn't want to simply copy the synthpop songs we like from the '80s,"
said David. "Rather, we wanted to take the elements we love about that style
and combine them with various other influences to create something original
and exciting."

"We wrote material back and forth and realized it might be enough for an
album," said Pat.

But by the end of college, the two were living far apart, making any
collaboration difficult.

"Pat went to do Teach For America in New Orleans.  He told me that he had
gotten a guy who had a recording studio to give him some inexpensive time.
So I went down there, we already had everything programmed and ready to go;
we knew we just needed a day or two to lay down a master," said David.

"We get to the studio, which was out on the bayou, and the guy had a really
nice set-up, but not too much of a clue on how to use the equipment.  Pretty
soon, his friends were coming over, lighting up joints and generally having
a good old time.  Anyway, he did something wrong at the end of the first day
and erased everything we had done.  The next day we started over, but at the
end of the day, something happened and we lost everything again.  That was a
rough time, almost the end of Ganymede."

David and Pat decided to start over and rely less on programming and more on
what might be termed manual triggering.  Dave:  "Most of what you hear was
played into the computer, very little programming, and mostly on analog
equipment.  Pat is kind of a nut about finding authentic old analog
keyboards."

After the Fall is an attempt by the duo to make what might be termed
intelligent synthpop.  "Sometimes the lyrics in synthpop can get kind of
silly; we tried to make them meaningful and interesting," Dave said.

"Needlessly complex electronica wears you out; it makes you unable to
appreciate the expressive quality of the music and turns the whole
enterprise into a murky wash of digital noise punctuated by vocal
silliness," Pat said.  "Overproduction is a crutch for vacuous music. The
best songs have minimalist tendencies, as well as lyrical concepts that fit
the music and reverberate beyond the song itself."

David lives in Los Angeles and works as an editorial assistant in the film
industry.  Patrick is pursuing his master's degree in journalism at
Berkeley.

The band is already in progress on their new album, as Pat says: "It took a
long time to set the first one up, hopefully things will move a bit faster
now."  They are also doing some remixes and working on putting together a
live show.

"We're trying to do something a little different, where we can bring the
excitement of analog synths to the stage and do an electronic show that's
not canned.  It'll be complicated to put on, but definitely something to
see," Pat says.  "And I'm continuing my ongoing tryouts for the Ganymede
back-up dancers," he adds with a chuckle.

Before the second day of the Synthpop Festival, Dave and Pat stopped by a
local video close-out shop and snapped up several mid-'80s B-movies like
"Revenge of the Ninja" and "Exterminator 2" in the classic clamshell gray
MGM boxes.  It was a good couple of days.
 

Visit www.planetGANYMEDE.com to hear song samples, read reviews, and much more!

Get their debut album and new single here: Ninthwave Order page

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