reviews / 2013

SOFT METALS - Lenses

Name: SOFT METALS – Lenses
Item: Lenses
Rating: 6.5
Author: Michele Guerrini

2013 (Captured tracks)

synth melancholy, synth-pop

by Michele Guerrini

6.5

We had left the Los Angeles synth duo about two years ago with the decent self-titled debut building a personal club of synth-pop reminiscences suffused with a sensual romanticism that sometimes danced to rhythms dear to Moroder and to Kraftwerk softer ones. A sighed kiss, eternally suspended and waiting to resolve itself in the night, one we find again in the cover of this new "Lenses", in a state of suspension, of absurd stasis.

A balance between eroticism and melancholy that continues to resonate throughout this new record, trapping it, however, in an impasse emotional one that doesn't allow for any real narrative unfolding, but only a cyclical process of reflection and magnetic dance.

The opener "Lenses" drops us into this continuous flow in a hazy, enveloping medias res, in a club-like atmosphere where Patricia Hall's voice soars into an ethereal nocturnal poetry that cuts across the rhythm of the synths; a model she'll follow in the darker, more claustrophobic "Tell Me", perhaps dwelling too long on its lyrical, metaphysical tones. An abstractness that gags and dampens the spirit of the tracks, concealing their more visceral, nocturnal side ("When I look Into Your Eyes", "No Turning Back"), wrapping it in a smoky elegance.

Halfway through the album, however, comes the splendid instrumental "Hourglass", which interrupts this opaque path and builds a crystalline framework, drawing on the new-synth imagery of, say, Italians Do It Better (Chromatics, Glass Candy & Co.), as well as what's already been done by the wave of acts like Gatekeeper. The following "On A Cloud" and "In The Air" represent a perfect balance between a construction close to beloved Kraftwerk and Carpenter, and dancey pushes that move between dreamlike corners and nocturnal spaces. The careful synth arpeggios, patterns fused between acid house and dark romantic temptations, lock tightly with words of rare artistic maturity, showing a careful exploration of their own emotional depth and its bond with the music.

A path that succeeds only up to a point, stumbling into a sometimes mannered and heavy-handed repetitiveness, offering us a project eager to grow in its expressive strength, giving rise to compositions that manage to dig from the past into the muscles and soul of a foggy present.

The closing instrumental "Interobserver" is a gaze into a Platonic solid, a crystal pierced by spatial images that refracts an abstract delicacy. A descendant of Tangerine Dream, as much as of the more naive dreams of Riechmann, it closes and reopens the circle of an interlude album, one that hides fascinating points of interpretation and an elegance that is not yet fully its own.

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11/09/2013

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Michele Guerrini, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition