Our dark metallic synthwave friend who leads The Algorithm is back with his fifth album. I’m actually better acquainted with their live shows than their recorded albums, of which I own just “Brute Force” (2016), and even though it’s 5 years since I last saw the band I have a distinct recollection of dark and vivid images flying out from a heavy electronic core.
Sure enough we are taken away on a journey through the skies and beyond. Dark and electronic it is, but so too it is emotive and dynamic. “Segmentation Fault” is a piece of hard trance and vast expanse. It’s hard not to think of Rammstein but without the words. The aggressivity comes from within the music. “Interrupt Handler” is more whimsical and mechanical than “Segmentation Fault” with all its shapes and stops and starts. It’s almost industrial. It’s fun to listen to as we fly away with a multitude of notes and strains of lurking menace. “Decompilation” is like the musical representation of a computer code. Of a later track, Rémi Gallego the man behind The Algorithm talks of a “soundscape full of computer logic and data flow”. This is “Decompilation”, until it breaks down and we find ourself in the middle of a dark intergalactic war. “Readonly” is heavier, electronically djenty yet momentarily dreamy. I shall certainly save this one but as a whole this is an album to be savoured. Our guide then takes us into a world of choirs and irregular motions to tickle our senses still further on the powerful “Cryptographic Memory”. Shuddering electronic djent greets us. Layers of electronic soundwaves pour through “Object Resurrection”. The sound is irregular but as always it has intent and focus.
“Multithreading” “is the closest I can get to what The Matrix 4 should have sounded like if it was any good,” comments Rémi. Indeed it is dark and atmospheric but then so is everything I heard on this album. The electronic rays of “Oracle Machine” sound as if an attack is being warded off, before we head off into another digital dreamland of layers and colours. The following title track is an obscure but dynamic ethereal adventure, firing its soundwaves hither and thither, starting and stopping and accompanied by a haunting choir before bringing back recollections of Space, the mysterious electronic band from the 1970s. But this has darker undertones, and “Inline Assembly” continues the trend, this time with a driving dark catchy electro dance track. This one is my favourite. It’s such fun and yet continues to dive deeply into our imagination. The final piece “Protocols” flows through in now customary fashion, and through its appeal to the imagination, belies the notion that electronic music has to be clinical or soft. This is neither.
It’s always great to be swept off to another place and The Algorithm achieves that with disarming ease by presenting to us layers of intrigue through cleverly worked dark electronica. “Data Renaissance” is a stellar album.
(9.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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