Armed with an assortment of analog synthesizers and digital sequencers, electro trio
Wrangler are named due to their stated goal of wrangling new music from vintage gear. The group is a collaboration between Ben Edwards (
Benge),
Phill Winter (
Tunng), and
Stephen Mallinder (
Cabaret Voltaire), and their music is a loose, improvisational blend of synth pop, techno, machine funk, and EBM. On albums such as 2020's
A Situation, the trio address the world's problems and the failures of technology while keeping things danceable.
Edwards and
Winter first used the name
Wrangler for a 2008 split single with
Scanner; their track was composed using a 1968 Moog Modular 3C, and it sampled the voice of the late Robert Moog.
Wrangler's Mind Your Own Sequence 7" was released by disco_r.dance in 2012. The A-side was a cover of
Delta 5's "Mind Your Own Business" featuring
Winter's group
Lone Taxidermist, while
Mallinder sang on the B-side, "Sequence On." With
Mallinder a full-fledged member of the group,
Wrangler released their debut full-length,
LA Spark, on their MemeTune imprint in 2014. The group remixed songs by
John Foxx,
Gazelle Twin,
Solvent, and several others. Their second album,
White Glue, arrived in 2016, quickly followed by Sparked (Modular Remix Project). A further EP of remixes, Three Memes, appeared in 2018. The same year, the three members of
Wrangler collaborated with
John Grant as
Creep Show, releasing the full-length debut
Mr Dynamite.
Bella Union, which released the
Creep Show album, signed
Wrangler and issued
A Situation in 2020. ~ Paul Simpson