When Black Marble’s album A Different Arrangement came out in 2012, I was hooked immediately. I played it every day, walking to work in the sunshine, feeling each bass line pulse like light off my face. Their throwback synthwave guns for a Suicide-meets-New-Order core, with the irrepressible bounce of Scritti Politti, and has been updated with slightly more modern trappings in their latest, 2016’s It’s Immaterial. This album builds on the band’s 1980s origin sound with explosive eight-bit, lashing synth, and heavy reverb that clouds the senses like a fog machine. I know none of us want to relive the horrors of 2016, so it’s soothing to experience songs with transportive properties, that take me from the clutches of that year and vault me straight back to the musical values of the early ’80s instead. by Kim Selling