Le Cliché is the synth-pop project of Gerard Ryan, whose Consumer Behaviour LP is due out December 25th via Medical Records. A native of Limerick, Ireland, Ryan is currently an Associate Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behavior at the Rovira I Virgili University in Spain, as well as a Visiting Fellow at Cornell University in New York. Le Cliché was initially begun back in 1984, when Gerard was still a teenager, but was ultimately shelved when he embarked upon a career in academics. However, in 2012, he published his track “Waiting on the Internet“, a sort of musical summation of his doctoral research on the human anxieties that accompany our social interactions on the net. With a growing proliferation of formerly forgotten synth music from the 70’s and 80’s being recovered, or finally released, by labels like Medical Records, Ryan felt the time was right to revisit his work as Le Cliché. Consumer Behaviour was first written and recorded in Catalonia, Spain, between 2012 and 2013, and was later finished “during the harsh winter of 2013-14 in frozen upstate New York.”
Along with the upcoming LP release, Ryan has also completed several “homemade” videos for tracks off the album, including this nifty 80’s throwback for “Human Computer Interaction“. Utilizing a variety of still and animated media, as well as whimsically placed split screens, the video often features images of classic PCs, as well as footage of that early digital ambassador, the ever creepy Max Headroom. In addition, abstract geometric images and raining graphic data war with B-grade found footage, including a hilarious looped segment of some office jerk in his cubicle, messing with his computer, until it rises up, robot-like, to deliver it’s own thrashing!
