Coldwave

What it is

France and Belgium at the start of the eighties, where the English post-punk records arrived a year late and got colder in transit. Trisomie 21 in Abscon, Asylum Party and Little Nemo outside Paris, Martin Dupont in Marseille: bands with a guitar and a bass but a TR-606 or a DR-55 where the drummer used to be. The tempo went up and the emotion went flat. What separates this from the English records it copied is the placement of the backbeat. A drummer puts the snare on 2 and 4 because that is where the arm falls. A programmer under no such obligation can put it on the offbeat instead, and a lot of these records do exactly that, which is why they lurch in a way no rock record does.

What it sounds like

Chorus on everything. The bass is a Jazz copy through a Boss CE-2, high in the mix and playing the melody, and the guitar is thin, trebly and drowned in a cheap plate. Drums are a 606 or a 707, dry and small, sitting well behind the bass. Synths are a Juno or a string machine holding a single minor chord for eight bars. Vocals are half-buried, doubled at the octave, and sung in French about half the time. There is a lot of 3kHz and almost no low end below 60Hz, because none of it was mastered for a club.

Key elements

• The offbeat snareOn the and of 2 and the and of 4 rather than the beats themselves. Nothing else in the family does this, and it is what makes the groove feel like it is falling forward.
• Chorused bass as leadThe bassline carries the tune. It is louder than the guitar, plays in the top half of its range, and is the reason these records read as melodic despite the drums.
• A 606 or a 707Small, dry Roland boxes with no sub and no swing. Programmed flat and left running, because stopping to write a fill would break the mood.
• Thin guitar, huge plateA single-coil through chorus and a spring or plate reverb of about 2 seconds, high-passed at 400Hz so the drums stay audible underneath it.
• StasisTwo chords, no key change, no chorus in the pop sense. Movement comes from parts entering and leaving rather than from harmony going anywhere.

How to get them

• Move the snarePut the backbeat on the and of 2 and the and of 4 and leave the beats themselves to a hi-hat. It feels wrong for about eight bars and then becomes the whole track.
• DrumsTR-606 samples, no reverb, high-passed at 120Hz, and around minus fourteen. They are the floor of the arrangement, not the front of it.
• BassDI a bass through a chorus at slow rate and moderate depth, compress at 4:1, and roll off below 80Hz. Write the hook here before you write anything else.
• GuitarBridge pickup, clean, chorus, then a 2 second plate at 30 percent wet with 20ms pre-delay. High-pass the reverb return at 400Hz so it sits above the bass instead of on it.
• VoiceOne take, close, no compression to speak of, then a second take an octave up mixed six decibels under it. Bury both about four decibels lower than feels comfortable.
• TempoSit at 130 to 138 and do not swing anything. The offbeat snare only works against a perfectly rigid grid; a shuffled version turns into something else entirely.

Reference points

Trisomie 21, Asylum Party, Little Nemo, Martin Dupont, Clair Obscur, Opera Multi Steel, and the Infrastition and Sordide Sentimental catalogues. Reference points for the sound, not endorsements.