The synthpop lineage running through London’s underground has many distinct strands, but few are as quietly prolific as Dave Baker.
Best known to electronic enthusiasts as one-half of Mute Records stalwarts I START COUNTING, FORTRAN 5 and KOMPUTER alongside long-time collaborator Simon Leonard, Baker has spent decades quietly shaping the independent wing of British synth heritage.
By night, however, Baker operates in an entirely different domain. Known as “Dave The Keys”, he spends six nights a week tickling the ivories for boisterous pub singalongs across North and East London. When the pub doors lock and the midnight chatter subsides, Baker retreats to his North London sanctuary. With the evening’s chord progressions still ringing in his ears, he dons his headphones, fires up his cherished arsenal of synthesizers and steps into his solo alter-ego lonelyklown.
Named after a poignant lyric from THE CARPENTERS’ classic ‘Rainy Days & Mondays’, the lonelyklown persona emerged out of 2020’s lockdown quietude. Following two acclaimed tape releases ‘Funny Sunny Morning’ and ‘Day Jar View’, Baker returns with his third long-player ‘Podload The Downcast’ which gets a CD release. Exploiting Baker’s Mute-friendly sensibilities with a distinctly English train-pass-and-pavement melancholy, ‘Podload The Downcast’ is a quintessential collection of synthpop for suburban dreamers and late-night commuters.
Opening with ‘n19 2 n5’, Baker offers a deadpan, bus-stop celebration of London’s nocturnal transit system. It’s an atmospheric track bearing direct ancestry to ‘Trans-Europe Express’, punctuated by distant, echoing police sirens that ground its romanticism firmly in concrete reality. The mood turns distinctly lonesome on ‘see how hard a heart can break’, a stark minimal ballad where a dry vocal delivery cuts through sparse vintage textures.
Elsewhere, ‘all the summers gone’ envelopes delicate piano chords in a wash of synthetic bubbles. Despite its autumnal atmosphere, a surprise guitar solo lends a bittersweet warmth, evoking long-faded August afternoons. That melancholy quickly evaporates on ‘Another Journey, Another Place’, a spritely slice of vocodered “Komputerpop”. Built for a grey Monday morning commute, it features an immediate synthetic bounce, Germanic sequences and an unmistakable Hooky-style bass.
Baker’s whimsical side shines on ‘ice creams in the rain’, an inventive track that cleverly imagines ‘Blade Runner’ if relocated from a futuristic Los Angeles to a soggy London high street. The record doesn’t shy away from biting commentary… on ‘sunday papered people’, Baker takes aim at suburban xenophobia over a pulsing sequence, expressing with sharp precision that “Debbie does The Daily Mail / Every word is true / It’s always someone else’s fault / But no one’s blaming you”; it highlights the paradox of how there can be a far right wing of DEPECHE MODE fandom despite the band’s anti-racist and socialist messages in their lyrics. #FuckFarage #FuckReformUK #ReformScum
The album’s second half drives harder into dancefloor territory. ‘last train home’ ups the tempo with driving disco arpeggios and rhythmic sirens, while ‘we were never promised tomorrow’ delivers a crunchy slice of cynical machine rock. Things settle into ambient intrigue driven by a chatterbox rhythm machine with ‘misty monday morning’, before concluding with the plaintive, Eno-esque synth waltz of ‘just a day’.
With ‘Podload The Downcast’, Dave Baker has crafted a charmingly observational and beautifully synthesized chronicle of modern urban life as lonelyklown. It’s warm, slightly bruised and thoroughly electronic. And you should all buy it!
‘Podload The Downcast’ is released independently on 9th October 2026 as a CD and download via https://davethekeys.bandcamp.com/
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Text by Chi Ming Lai
2nd October 2026
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