- Featureless Ghost is a retro-leaning synth-pop duo based in Atlanta. Their 2012 LP Personality Matrix, with its dark and mean underpinnings, showed that they're more Ministry than Erasure, but you wouldn't know that from "Sugarcoated," their most placid song, now re-released on Matt Weiner's new label, CGI Records. The soft pads and sensual vocal layering brings to mind the Cocteau Twins, and it's hard not to hear a little Karin Dreijer in Elise Tippin's voice—they're still in the early stage of the band where they sound like a bundle of influences.
Scott Fraser's remix extends "Sugarcoated" and burns that sweetness off until it's a thick tar coating. If the duo's work hints occasionally at early EBM, his lengthy "Baudot Code Rewire" bludgeons those signifiers into it, turning the percussion into a hissing haze of high-end. Another track from Personality Matrix, "Cybosapien," also features, and this one's a little twitchier, more in line with what you'd find on a darkwave compilation. The EP is rounded off with a remix from L.I.E.S. artist (and Minimal Wave associate) Beau Wanzer, another smart choice. He tosses "Flash" some amphetamines and lets it tweak out with a distorted throb, so comically fast that it's almost like slowed-down gabber. On both remixes the band take remarkably well to their dance floor makeovers, showing there's hidden potential in their already appealing sound.
Tracklist A1 Sugarcoated
A2 Sugarcoated (Scott Fraser's Baudot Code Rewire)
B1 Cybosapien
B2 Flash (Beau Wanzer Adjustment)