The Faint (Photo courtesy of Saddle Creek)

Name  The Faint (Todd Fink)

Best known for  Human synthpunk.

Current city  Our home base is now Twentynine Palms, CA (Joshua Tree).

Really want to be in  Tokyo

Excited about  Psyched to be touring and ironing out our new album.

My current music collection has a lot of  Minor key melodic cold-wave.

And a little bit of  Psychological techno.

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Preferred format  Direct to brain musical interface please!

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:

1

Surfer Rosa, Pixies

We brought this album the first time we went into a real studio to record. We were told that it didn’t sound good at all. That is the moment I realized producing records was a separate skillset from writing songs. This record is as close to perfect as you can get. There’s so much character. It’s brazen, energetic, catchy, and mysterious. It’s weird and simple, or maybe I should say uncluttered and the correct amount raw.

2

13 songs, Fugazi

For a studio record it really captures their live energy. I’ve seen them many times…and even opened for them once(!).

An album full of the smartest and most memorable basslines. Punk energy that’s not afraid to experiment. I love how the rhythms lock together. Actually, the rhythm of our song “Paranoiattack” spawned from a practice where we were playing Margin Walker:)  

3

Travelogue, The Human League

This is one of a few lesser known new wave records we found out about while we were writing Blank-wave Arcade. It’s bleak, futuristic, and melodic. Very minimalistic and conceptually adventurous. It’s got a sci-fi b-movie vibe. I imagine this record paired with the visuals from the George Lucas student 1967 film called Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB.

4

Three Imaginary Boys, The Cure

Everything is coming to a grinding halt! Yesss! Great dystopian pop here. It kinda sounds like Kids in the Hallsnerped the guitar lick for their theme song doesn’t it? Best album cover perhaps!? I’m a sucker for awkward minimalistic interiors like this. When anyone says “triplet” I think of this iconic drum fill in “10:15 Saturday Night.”  The first Cure I heard was the Staring at the Sea: The Singles so I found this record pursuing more music from that early Cure era.

5

Computer World, Kraftwerk

This is music to go inside about. Get out of the sun and clean your house to this.  You know humanoids are coming to clean up your mess at some point.  But in the meantime you just need to create enough value so you can afford one. Kraftwerk are the Beatles of electronic music. I’d LOVE to see them live.  There is almost a sense of urgency now. Like any show could be their last one…  But I bet it’s gonna be more like The Residents where they rotate new people in to keep it eternal. 

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