VNV Who? This was my first thought (and still is) while listening to this synthpop/ebm gem of an album. Sacrilege you say! Well not quite.

Code 64 hail from Sweden, and their name instantly implies bleeps, blops and other screeching sounds from the past, an obvious reference to the commodore64. Sure enough the first track "Sea of stars" contained a fair bit of my favourite bleeps, and it got my full attention. But that would not be enough to motivate me to write this, after all i sadly don't know many people that share my kink and addiction for such old-school memorabilia.

But soon enough you realise that Departure truly, erm, departs from this, and sets sail to become one of the best ebm/synthpop albums you've listened to in the past couple of years.

While bands like Welle:Erdball seem to rely mostly on this retro sid-chip sound (and i'm not putting them down, they are one of my favourite acts), Code 64 seem to have a couple more aces up their sleeves. Amazing song-writing and sense of melody.

No single track stands out from my point of view, i would be really hard pressed to pick one from the other. It's all very professional and most tracks can and deserve to be dance floor hits.

Life in electro land can be tough, so many things happening all the time, both banal and exciting, that it's hard to keep up sometimes. But no electronic music listener should be allowed to get on with his life without pausing for a moment and appreciating this release. My own pausing moment was long overdue.