Ok I knew nothing about them and frankly the bands the members are in are not, what you might call, haunts of mine. But the name and the vague descriptions kind of intrigued me so here we are. Spooky gothy industrial? Not a clue.
So ‘Reverse Engineer’ spreads out with a gorgeous slow moving dark ambient hum. The electro beat steps in, light notes interspersed as though gathering the material together. Lush production, a curious sombre tone and half spoken vocals that sweep me back to glory days of EBM; pre-metalized FLA, Front 242, that kind of masterful hand. The beat hardens, technology of power pushing relentlessly. It’s a fantastic, moody slow burn layered with sublime skill until the full weight weighs in. The clean vocals add a real touch of the goth and the nine minutes seem like half that as it blossoms out into a synthwave melody of beautiful proportions. Clearly I’m in the hands of masters.
‘Machines Like Us’ pulses the EBM into life once more. The buzzing wall of noise that hits smothers you like a fire blanket as the vocals murmur in your ears. Noises rise, insinuate, fade and rise again. The echoing voice is utterly hypnotic. There is not so much a gentleness to it as a sureness of touch that needs no more force than is offered. Melodies like fast blinking lights in the plasma fog calculating something beyond your understanding flit through the slow riff. And always there is something else to push through. Another current of power to make the fog glow a dark, brooding neon. Captivating.
‘Spectral Embrace’ is more skeletal. Robotic vocals dominating the first part before an almost chiming melody appears only to be swallowed by the bite of the vocals. ‘Echoes’ is a kind of musical drift, a slow languid half dream of a track. It should keep me completely under the spell of the album but sadly for some reason it occasionally makes me gently push back a little as it grows a little too cloying but, hey, I am sure others will simply fall into its warm waters and it doesn’t break the spell anyway.
And we close with the near thirteen minutes of ‘Haunted Plasma’ itself. A rhythmic soundscape is created with ease, that perfect touch of building layers upon the beat and taking it to a place where the delicate notes and vocals bring a sense of wonder, almost like the spectacular Dim Lights album Starspire driven harder by a distinct, directed purpose. It has that sense that the tension simply builds with each crash of a cymbal or heightened pulse of the keyboards. It’s a trance, no doubt. A dark, dancing heavy psyched out nod. Keyboards that may be guitars, guitars that may be keyboards; a sense of just letting this take you where the hell it wants to go. It’s just gorgeous, beautiful and utterly haunting music.
EBM and dark ambient based electronica, with a sense of wonder. Multi-layered, compelling and just full of wonder and awe and an otherworldly feel. An intelligence that you have never quite encountered before. My reservations about ‘Echoes’ aside this is the finest electronic birthed album since that Dim Lights masterpiece for me.
Just music to hold you and let your soul journey on.
Essential.
(9/10 Gizmo)
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