As if secreted from the human species like a concrete hive of ‘progress’, cities – dystopian or utopian – are always present in sci-fi. They are mutually bound, like Dr Pepper and plaque.
This new album, DROKK, by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, inspired by the fictional, ‘Mega City One’, from the Judge Dredd comic series – is one part of (what I would call) an entire sub-culture of work inspired by imagined cities – insert my own album (humble brag) here – spanning the last hundred years, at the very least.
It’s got everything you expect (and what I, personally want ) from a score of a fictional future – synths, and not much else; drones, fuzz, pulses and endless bleak repetitious themes.
On first listen it immediately recounts numerous, obvious (but essential) influences. From Vangelis, Fiedel’s murky electronic score for ‘The Terminator’ (especially on ‘Clone Gunman’), to Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’, score by Morricone (‘Lawmaster/Pursuit’).
On second listen, it gets even better. From track 7 the fractious pulses temporarily calm, introducing the slightest hint of the human voice on ‘Exhale’. ’Dome Horizon’ (which sounds like the title of some kind of Arthur C. Clarke epic) unleashes a beautiful but fleeting moment of optimism before the darkness and adrenaline sets back in to close.
LISTEN + THEN BUY D R O K K ON BANDCAMP OR FROM INVADA RECORDS > > > > >
- gazelletwin | 04.25.2012
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Posted In: album review, drokk, electronic music, music, sci-fi, Uncategorized | Tags: ben salisbury, DROKK, drokk review, fiedel, geoff barrow, mega city one, vangelis
CFCF has produced an album that appears to come from a deeply personal place. For electronic music to sound this immersed in abstract personal feelings without ever becoming over-emotive or schmaltzy is an accomplishment in itself. For what initially appears to be a conceptual thread tightly holding the pieces together without trying too hard to make its intentions fully known is another. The music feels as if it is gradually revealing something about its author track by track, but still retaining a privacy, a reflection of the enigmatic musician who made it. The album sometimes plays like the soundtrack to a lost Aronofsky film, and at other times it belies its modern aesthetic with twists into Radiophonic territory, which becomes the most charming part of a section such as ‘Exercise 3 (Buildings)’, with its seemingly simple piano arpeggios developing into a moving piece that is far greater than the sum of its parts (at the start I was initially thinking “Sweeney Todd!?”).
Settling into the album and its trance inducing short, flowing, instrumental pieces, I found myself jarred by the surprise introduction of 80s pop vocals and garage beats in ‘Exercise 5 (September)’. That’s not to say it doesn’t retain the densely produced, dream-like aesthetic of the other tracks. But it is a seemingly odd choice to have an album that flows so beautifully otherwise interrupted with a full on song. Perhaps this is intentional, as a way of preventing the listener from settling into something that may become too familiar too soon, where the previous patterns of shifting piano chords and soft-synths have been hovering over somewhat similar territory. These are ‘Exercises’ after all. So are we to assume these are not complete works? Fragments of ideas loosely held together? I would see them as just the opposite, the album is a fully realised whole that perhaps takes a bizarre interlude as detour. They are exercises in as much as the titles suggest (Entry, School, Loss), part of life’s training, and learning more about one’s self as time passes.
- bernholz | 04.13.2012
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Posted In: Review | Tags: Anti-Ghost Moon Ray, bernholz, CFCF, stream