Listen to "Ritual" by Finland's fastest rising band SIN COS TAN

I could have picked other songs from Sin Cos Tan's (Finland) - locally super-successful - Afterlife to be present in this feature, something a edgier, bleaker, more jolting, but I didn't. I'm in the mood for something kinder, gentler and more embracing.
When talking to a colleague of mine about the featured "Ritual" my first comment was that it emits a nice feeling I equate with being a child in the '80s. Now being a kid in the '80s ruled and my childhood was fortunate to the max, but I was very susceptible to the synth, keyboard, electro drum and Moog driven pop of the time, heard on the radio. My dad hated it, and it also contrasted with my insane love for heavy metal and later, speed and thrash metal. But the pop did move me and played with my feelings, and to a certain extent, Sin Cos Tan manage to strike that dormant nerve with "Ritual."

I ran the song by my friend Jóhann Ágúst, manager at Kraumur, not-for-profit music office and fund based in Reykjavik, Iceland. And this is how he felt about "Ritual": "In this band it feels like I've found a distant relative of the band Bloodgroup (label mates at Sugarcane Recordings). The song is pretty hip yet at the same time it is weirdly innocent. It takes a bit of bars to get going but the pitch-up in the chorus, I like that a lot. It's easy for me to connect with the '80s sound because that is when I was getting into music, the electro feel and synt sounds. In "Ritual" I find some OMD, Ultravox and even New Order, but also, there's something about the vocals that harkens back to The Cure, in my mind at least. But you could say that that which I find cool about this song is some kinda brooding new romantic vibe."
I got the Robert Smithering too. I'm glad Jóhann put it this way because here I was, transported back to sitting in front of my family's TV set, chocolate milk in one hand, and popping Lost Boys into the VHS with the other. Yeah, let us listen to G Tom Mac's "Cry Little Sister" (here)  right now!

Hildur Lilliendahl, a prominent women’s rights activists and a  Reykjavik city hall project manager: "This is one of these songs that successfully makes one want to dance and to just lie in bed while staring at the ceiling, dreaming, early evening. Very pretty. The first reminds me, almost uncofmortably so, of "Skinny Love" by Bon Iver, but I got over that quickly." Follow her on twitter @snilldur

An edgier take from the album would be "Avant Garde" (listen). And if you like more of the nostalgia we here at #HalCo HQ connected with, check out the dancy "Part Of Me," (listen) which turns up the drama and romance even more. The albums varies in mood and stimmung throughout its eleven tracks. Check out the four song preview on Sugarcane's Soundcloud (here). Get Afterlife from iTunes and Sugarcane Recordings.
- Birkir Fjalar