It's hip to be square! (again)
McCaskey grad goes into orbit with retro-'80s sound

Thursday, October 5
By Diane M. Bitting
New Era Staff Writer

GANYMEDE IS: A. one of Jupiter's moons. B. a cupbearer for the gods in Greek mythology. C. a character in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" D. a musical duo that does '80s-style "synthpop" or E. all of the above.

If you picked E, you're absolutely right, although D is the more relevant answer here. That's because the singing half of Ganymede is former Lancastrian Patrick Runkle.

In June, Ganymede _ named after Jupiter's moon, to evoke a spacy, otherworldly mood _ put out its first compact disc, "After the Fall." It's not mainstream stuff, but it's on the racks at independent music stores in California, and locally, XYZed carries it.

If Runkle's name sounds familiar, then you must have been reading Teen Weekend for quite some time. At least since 1998.

From early 1995, when he was a senior at J.P. McCaskey High School, until the end of 1998, Runkle wrote a biweekly movie-review column for Teen Weekend.

Starting with "Higher Learning" (which he panned) and ending with "Star Trek: Insurrection" (which he liked) this movie buff explained in a thoughtful style why he considered one movie to be a masterpiece while another really stunk.

During the years he wrote his column, Runkle went to film school in Los Angeles (his column credit always said he dreamed of being a film director "someday"), but was disillusioned by his experience there. So he returned East and went to Swarthmore College, where he earned a degree in linguistics in 1998.

That fall, with a desire to "give back," he signed on with Teach for America, which took him to a school in the rural and impoverished town of Reserve, La. Teaching ninth and 10th grade special education students was "an amazing, eye-opening experience."

After his stint in Louisiana, he returned to California, this time to attend the graduate school of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. Now 23, Runkle is in his second year there.

"I've been having a lot of fun with the TV program, with TV journalism," says Runkle, who was first featured in Teen Weekend in a December 1994 story about a school radio show, on which he and two friends broadcast funny bits, like the top 10 ways to mispronounce Newt Gingrich's name.

While at film school, Runkle met his friend and future Ganymede partner, David Friede, with whom he shares similar tastes in movies and music.

That includes a liking of post-apocalyptic movies, like the one that inspired their debut title, "After the Fall of New York," which has a feeling of "otherworldliness, corniness, cheesiness. ... something about the aesthetic that is our aesthetic. Something that is serious but not really," Runkle says.

Runkle had always played the piano and dabbled in writing music. "I really got into it in college," with a synthesizer as his creative outlet.

His primary influence was, not surprisingly, film music; an early favorite was the "Chariots of Fire" theme song by Vangelis. Other favorites are the "Midnight Express" score by Giorgio Moroder and the Ennio Morricone music from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

From there he was turned on to the Cold War era '80s synthesized pop by bands like Human League ("Don't You Want Me") and Pet Shop Boys ("West End Girls").

During college Runkle kept in touch with Friede, and "we thought it would be fun to write some songs together." Using a "vintage" analog keyboard/synthesizer hooked into his computer, Runkle was able to experiment with and record different tracks of sound.

While Runkle was in Louisiana, he and Friede decided they had enough material to record "for real." Runkle had met a guy with a recording studio, so Friede came to Louisiana, and they went to work. Because of equipment problems, that first session was a disaster. But in the ensuing months, Runkle continued to work on the tracks.

After he moved to Oakland, Calif., he had a new computer and equipment, so he continued reworking. "We completely redid some of the songs," he says.

Despite the spacy, usually fast-paced synthetic sounds, the songs are about the oft-explored subjects of love and love lost and finding oneself. But they also extend to being a "City Dweller" (Runkle's favorite song, which he calls quintessential Ganymede) and even modern-day China in "Communism." The song "Clever Girl" uses a line from the movie "Total Recall."

The song "After the Fall" has to do with when "something terrible that we think will never happen does indeed occur. After you've gone through that it's "After the Fall,"' Runkle had told an interviewer with DLK Magazine.

Ganymede received good reviews, with comments like "This is one of the best American synthpop bands and releases I have ever heard," from Danny King of Synthetic Vision, and "Currently stuck in my CD player," from Electroage's "Final Man."

Runkle did virtually all the singing, with Friede being a cameo "mystery voice." But the vocals weren't their main focus.

"We really concentrated almost to an obsessive level on the sound and the production levels of the music and what's happening in each ear and effects."

Last December, they finished a demo, which they sent to a guy associated with Lexicon magazine who was starting a new label, Ninthwave Records. Ganymede's 10-song "After the Fall" was the label's first release.

The whole process, from recording to having the album produced and distributed, was a "serious learning process."

"They'll (CDs) sit in your closet unless you have someone who's going to actually put them in stores," Runkle says.

So far, Runkle estimates that a couple hundred have sold; their goal is to sell 1,000 by next spring, when they expect to release their second album at a synthpop convention in LA. The new work will be in a more modern dance mode with a "euromantique" feel. Runkle is hoping to release a preview single, "Neon Rain," in December or January.

While there's a scattered synth scene in the United States, centered in L.A. and Salt Lake City, today's synthpop is concentrated more in Europe, with bands like Sweden's Elegant Machinery and Germany's Kraftwerk, which Runkle calls a big influence.

"It's good that it's not my full-time job," says Runkle, who in addition to his studies works in the press office of a transportation planning commission. "It's certainly something that's fun and has been a dream of mine."

Behind the idea of Ganymede, is "the hope that I'll get to write music for movies," says Runkle, who will be doing the scores for two J-school documentary projects.

For more information, go to the web site www.planetganymede.com.