Flying Batteries

New Motive Power and The Flying Batteries are two electronic acts who produce electronic chip-tune infused rock music both of which are affiliated with The Hai, a collective of musicians spanning from different parts of the world whose expansive roster of artists have been consistently producing, promoting, and releasing a variety of different styles of electronic music since 2011.

New Motive Power

New Motive Power’s appeal is defined by the versatility of a smooth mix of chip-tune and various other electronic stylings with the progression of modern rock. ‘The Escape’ starts out strong with a very stripped down video game sound that develops quickly into a firm dance beat. The track shows plenty of good progression; these processed almost robotic vocals come in over the beat that helps to tie it all together giving it a sense of completeness before mellowing out and transitioning into a short solo. The production is spot on with everything coming through so crisply but although I think the vocals help give the music a sense of completeness I would enjoy these songs a lot more without the addition of vocals which are unfortunately hit and miss for me. Sometimes they fit in perfectly and other times they come off as sounding unsure and sloppy with the vocal effects obscuring the performance of New Motive Power’s ability to sing, or lack of. Seeing as the music featured on this release is primarily electronic, reflecting the music and sounds of old school video games it makes sense as to why the vocals are processed but I think there are better ways to get the vocals across. New Motive Power definitely has it’s strengths in capturing a listener’s interests with loud rock-inpired electronic music that throws a ton of catchy hooks at you but the execution is a detractor that ends up overpowering the otherwise great production.

The Flying Batteries

I enjoyed the vocals much more on The Flying Batteries side of the split, they just seem a little more passionate and overall more authentic, specifically on the track ’Passion’ which is this sprawling arena sized track that draws influences from shoegaze and tastefully implements them into a very likable package that is reminiscent of the Crystal Castles cover of ‘Not In Love’ featuring Robert Smith. The partnership between these sounds, this unlikely combination of electronic music and shoegaze is so particular that it no longer becomes a combination of the two but is instead unified as one sound. This unity is further exemplified in the track ‘Rabbit Hole’, a thunderous bombardment of electronic bliss that includes some monolithic guitar work at the end, a nice surprise for an album full of bleeps and bloops. Although the way these tunes are assembled, their dependance on pop melodies is what makes them so likable for some but for me it is this straightforwardness that keeps me from enjoying them as much as I think I would if the were just a bit more varied.

On a side note, how awesome is that album art?

Overall rating (New Motive Power): 5.7

Overall rating (Flying Batteries): 6.3

Favorite Track: Rabbit Hole

Recommended: Check out The Hai’s back catalogue of releases.

Released: 04 February 2012 - inb4track

New Motive Power and The Flying Batteries are two electronic acts who produce electronic chip-tune infused rock music both of which are affiliated with The Hai, a collective of musicians spanning from different parts of the world whose expansive roster of artists have been consistently producing, promoting, and releasing a variety of different styles of electronic music since 2011.

New Motive Power

New Motive Power’s appeal is defined by the versatility of a smooth mix of chip-tune and various other electronic stylings with the progression of modern rock. ‘The Escape’ starts out strong with a very stripped down video game sound that develops quickly into a firm dance beat. The track shows plenty of good progression; these processed almost robotic vocals come in over the beat that helps to tie it all together giving it a sense of completeness before mellowing out and transitioning into a short solo. The production is spot on with everything coming through so crisply but although I think the vocals help give the music a sense of completeness I would enjoy these songs a lot more without the addition of vocals which are unfortunately hit and miss for me. Sometimes they fit in perfectly and other times they come off as sounding unsure and sloppy with the vocal effects obscuring the performance of New Motive Power’s ability to sing, or lack of. Seeing as the music featured on this release is primarily electronic, reflecting the music and sounds of old school video games it makes sense as to why the vocals are processed but I think there are better ways to get the vocals across. New Motive Power definitely has it’s strengths in capturing a listener’s interests with loud rock-inpired electronic music that throws a ton of catchy hooks at you but the execution is a detractor that ends up overpowering the otherwise great production.

The Flying Batteries

I enjoyed the vocals much more on The Flying Batteries side of the split, they just seem a little more passionate and overall more authentic, specifically on the track ’Passion’ which is this sprawling arena sized track that draws influences from shoegaze and tastefully implements them into a very likable package that is reminiscent of the Crystal Castles cover of ‘Not In Love’ featuring Robert Smith. The partnership between these sounds, this unlikely combination of electronic music and shoegaze is so particular that it no longer becomes a combination of the two but is instead unified as one sound. This unity is further exemplified in the track ‘Rabbit Hole’, a thunderous bombardment of electronic bliss that includes some monolithic guitar work at the end, a nice surprise for an album full of bleeps and bloops. Although the way these tunes are assembled, their dependance on pop melodies is what makes them so likable for some but for me it is this straightforwardness that keeps me from enjoying them as much as I think I would if the were just a bit more varied.

On a side note, how awesome is that album art?

Overall rating (New Motive Power): 5.7

Overall rating (Flying Batteries): 6.3

Favorite Track: Rabbit Hole

Recommended: Check out The Hai’s back catalogue of releases.

Released: 04 February 2012 - inb4track

Artist: New Motive Power (and) The Flying Batteries
Album: Snescore
Year: 2012
Length: 17:05

1. New Motive Power - The Escape [4:50]
2. New Motive Power solves A Problem Like Maria - Unease (Feat. Mattir) [3:50]
3. The Flying Batteries - Passion [4:23]
4. The Flying Batteries - Rabbit Hole [4:01]

Download Link

The Hai are quickly becoming a haven for independent electronic artists, with four of their members featured on this split extravaganza. Both bands play a variety of video game influenced synth-rock, but neither fall into the trappings of "sounding too much like a Mega Man game." New Motive Power brings two more insanely well produced tracks that are catchy as hell, with the second track featuring A Problem Like Maria (who has been "solved" before by Water Gun Water Gun Sky Attack and Radio Wire Empire) and also produced by electronic artist Mattir. The Flying Batteries side is even catchier (I -CANNOT- get Passion out of my head) and a bit thicker with guitars more at the front of the mix.

The split comes in two versions available on each of the artist's bandcamp pages. Each has it's own download-only bonus remix track, and is worth checking out. I'm quite excited to see what else The Hai will be putting out in the future. - ERROROSION

Synth Rock mostly, with a post-punk feel – specially from the tone and style of the vocals. Most of this stuff just screams 80's influence, not only from post-punk, like the sort of innocence in the use of synths to make up pretty danceable tracks, probably a footprint of the “snescore” they used to categorize their sound on bandcamp.

It’s not all like that though. The 80's feel, this time leaning towards serious Bono on serious U2 moments, is there in the first part of “A Place to Hide”, for example. This track comes up in the album in just the perfect moment, just after the first three tracks which aim to be hits – and with a pretty good aim. The first track on this is so catchy, vibrant, feel good, danceable, I can’t figure out why this isn’t on MTV or at least making people dance somewhere. If you are just here for the ride, seriously go listen at least to that first track, it’s golden, and A Place to Hide would be the perfect, “serious moment now” second single.

I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing fillers at this point, but even though the immediate satisfaction of the radio-ready first track is still in some sense the best moment of the album, the album doesn’t go down in breath or energy. But they do allow themselves a cool, always-changing instrumental track , “Adam”, which is really enjoyable and samples Final Fantasy 6. The second part of “A Place to Hide” also comes up, but it doesn’t have the same feel as the first part.

Great stuff, first track is a potential hit, I hope these guys the best of luck with this stuff.

-Carpeaux - inb4track

I am a big fan of split releases by independent musicians. This type of release is often designated for the punk rock/hardcore scene but “Snescore” features a split of polished dance rockers New Motive Power and lo-fi synth duo The Flying Batteries and their tribute to 16-bit SNES (Super Nintendo). These acts are both members of The Hai, which describes itself as a collective, not a netlabel. The difference? I’m assuming a contract. Why not? Anything goes these days, where indie musicians don’t have to be an object of mainstream media to reach a “global audience”. The two acts featured in this EP alone are from Brazil (NMP) and Scotland (TFB) and this collective currently consists of 15 acts from around the world.

New Motive Power seem to be the stronger of the two acts, their vocal arrangements and dirty ring-mod synths are biting and heavy and “The Escape” is a standout tracks based mostly on its’ synth hook. The downside was that it went from a King Crimson-esque dance track to “Uneasy” which has the vocal melody and subject matter of an emo b-side. In my opinion, this deviation would have been warranted if the synth patch had been modified as well, but it wasn’t. I just found myself wanting to hear the previous track instead. In my opinion these guys are going to be awesome, should they stay funky and weird.

The Flying Batteries provide the darker side of SNEScore. They have heavier saturated guitar riffs, lo-fi drum programming and I’m pretty sure their tracks “Passion” and “Rabbit Hole” could sync up with The Crow opening title sequence. I’m kidding, of course, but it does remind me of mid-90's industrial music. My initial reaction was that their recordings sounded less interesting than The New Motive Power but I think it was due to the lacking vocal production (there are some things that even cavernous reverb can’t cover up).

Overall I think it was a worthwhile pairing of bands experimenting in their equally raw and unfiltered beginning stages of snescore. [RF] - Netlablism