“The album plays as a conceptual soundtrack to a non existent film”. Press releases, doncha just love them? In fact, I’m sure that this website’s podcast played a track from it and our esteemed editor was at a bit of a loss as to what to say about it… without calling it “pretentious art-wank”, which he didn’t.
And the reason he didn’t and instead played a track was that, putting aside all the arty nonsense, it’s actually a cracking album. You can even take the tracks in isolation before considering any images that might come to mind. Opener ‘The Process of Being’ is a great, gothic stomp of a tune, recalling the finest industrial acts such as Cabaret Voltaire and Front242. You can hear the filmic theme in that we immediately switch to a more ambient track, ‘Separation’ which has that haunted musical box quality, a repetitively insistent earworm of a piece. It’s partly instrumemental, the album – whatever voices the are are darkly muttered pieces of what might be ‘dialogue’. It’s electronic-based, but 2 Unlimited it ain’t. What is apparent about the ten tracks here is the propessionalism of them – everything here could pass for a tune by another act at their peak, be it early Human League, or Portion Control, or DJ Shadow or Eno. The highs and lows, the ambient and more electro contrasts become quite intruguing as the album progresses. In fact, I might just watch their film – whenever they get it made.