Digital Leather - Sorcerer (Goner)

***In 2002 DIGITAL LEATHER were two young men playing keyboards: DL Mastermind SHAWN FOREE and RYAN WONG (Destruction Unit, Tokyo Electron, Reatards). Electronic karate chops and drill sergeant drum simulators created fuzzed out synth punk at warehouse punk shows to punk rock kids that hated keyboards and hated Digital Leather. They then had their faces melted. Several similar shows played a role, directly or indirectly, in shaping an underground music revolution. Flash forward several years—and Digital Leather has become a shape shifting force in the new "it" genre of synth punk. With a handful of sold out singles and LPs under his leather jock strap, Shawn Foree is now preparing his magic wand for the masses. He's traded his synthesizer for a guitar, and Ryan Wong for a full band. He's still recording songs himself in a bedroom in Arizona. He brings his band and the a disc of recordings to Memphis for Gonerfest 2, then drops a sonic A-bomb of a set at the Buccaneer Lounge in the middle of the afternoon. Luckily it is all captured on multi-track by a crack guerilla recording team. Home recordings from that time become Side A to Sorcerer; Side B is the live recording. Layered synthetic sounds come together with stark beats and dry vocals to create a lonely mechanical epic that reminds us of man's impending doom. Chillingly delicate and abrasively aggressive, Sorcerer masterfully negotiates the spaces between minimal electronic music and ferocious synth punk.