reviews / 2020

ABYSS X - Innuendo

Name: ABYSS X – Innuendo
Item: Innuendo
Rating: 6.5
Author: Damiano Pandolfini

2020 (Dmoth)

avant-electro-pop, gothic-pop

by Damiano Pandolfini

6.5

There's a track by multimedia artist Abyss X that hits straight at the gut: it's the single "Love Altercation", a song on which you seem to hear the illegitimate daughter of Leslie Winer and Madonnarestlessly writhing beneath the scales of her own armor, emotionally lost amid debilitating mantras trip-hop, sensual phrasing straight out of “Erotica” and urban, sci-fi overtones sci-fi.

“Innuendo” is certainly a dark record, but also a maximalist one in its evocation of soundscapes bordering on the theatrical; ten desolate wastelands dominated by electronics assembled in blocks, through dull thuds, crashes and roaring rhythms. Abyss X's voice is often little more than a whisper, before climbing into a plastic falsetto full of melodramatic tones, as if she were a virgin trapped in the minotaur's jaws. A series of production tricks and devices through which the record's strengths and limitations are immediately apparent, but it would still be a shame not to at least pause for a while in this evocative sonic labyrinth.

Indeed, “Fluxuation” seduces like few others, with that bouncing refrain darkwave locked into a hulking, clattering synthetic churn. It's truly impossible not to think of FKA Twigs on tracks such as “Can’t Compare” and “Slow Burn”, particularly in the use of overlapping, reverb-drenched vocals – but however derivative it may be, the trick still achieves the desired effect, especially on the second of the two tracks mentioned, which at times bares its teeth like a ravenous beast.

Among the best tracks on the album, “Attraction In Doubt” moves over a series of basslines that seem to have come straight out of console of the Raime, a manipulated haze of ambient-techno elements rearranged into a track where the author's spoken-word delivery recalls "Corporate Cannibal" by Grace Jones and - by extension - the whole imagery of dub pitch-black of "Hurricane". Also quite intriguing is "Private Figure", another brief but possessed de-composition with techno reverberations.

But in this constant pursuit of atmosphere, the songwriting is often little more than a faint hint of lyrics, as if the author wanted to break away from the song form to enter a more purely avant-garde expressive territory; yet between loose-limbed pulsations and nearly unintelligible lyrics, the result is too intangible to earn her such a leap. A case in point is "Palpitations", a kind of noise collage built on menacing pattern rhythmic elements and melodic lines drained by anemia, but also the evocative yet overly disjointed "Animosity" and the closing "Sharp Tongue".

For those already well-versed in the back alleys of vocal electronics and avant-pop, Abyss X's artistic vision might seem derivative; her impact is certainly stronger as producer than as a singer-songwriter and performer. The work's aesthetic takes precedence over its form, and the artist herself feels too recessed in the mix to properly assert herself over her own sonic mantle. There's no doubt, though, that Abyss X is a highly skilled digital manipulator, and in the right moments her "Innuendo" manages to sound seductive and unsettling. An artist definitely worth keeping an eye on.

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18/11/2020

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Damiano Pandolfini, 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