Ganymede

Although their debut arrived at the dawn of the new millennium, the synth-pop outfit Ganymede channels the spirit of the early 1980s. Jupiter’s largest moon supplies the name for the project, whose lineup features Patrick Runkle handling vocals and synthesizers alongside David Friede on synthesizers. The two first encountered each other while attending film school in Los Angeles. At that stage Runkle contributed a movie-review column and harbored ambitions of directing. He ultimately withdrew from the program and relocated to Louisiana, where he instructed students with special needs. Having begun tinkering with synthesizers during college, Runkle hoped to co-write material with Friede, yet the physical distance between them created obstacles. They kept in touch anyway, and Friede traveled to a low-cost Louisiana studio to lay down the tracks they had developed. Those sessions proved disastrous: the studio owner accidentally erased everything captured on the opening day, and a separate mishap produced identical results on the following day. After Runkle came back to California, he and Friede rebuilt the songs on his home computer using newly acquired equipment. In late 1999 they mailed a demo CD to the president of independent label Ninthwave Records. The imprint issued Ganymede’s first album, After the Fall, in 2000.