My Review:
Left For Pleasure - Human Contract
Germany
Synthwave - Darkwave - Postpunk
Once upon a time there was an abundance of musical genres, a constant bustle of new discoveries, which created astonishment, assimilation and joy as a consequence, and then turned into parents capable of generating multiple births.
But what hurts the old scribe most is the lack of sound research, its development and a precise stylistic position.
Everything is flattened, equal and boring: digital, musical ignorance and disinterest in a serious and professional approach has done the rest.
There are exceptions, and one of them is this German band (look, what a coincidence, right?), which arrives after four singles on its long-distance debut.
And it is dawn, spring, joy, circular seduction, within atmospheres laden with sadness, controlled agitation, shedding of quick-setting tears.
Then these sounds: let happiness be given a portion of the sky and us the task of a respectful bow.
Let's take a closer look at where they come from and what makes them such an interesting band.
Halle is a city with a troubled, difficult history that is also little talked about musically: it would seem to be forced to turn in on itself because places that are too important and famous are close to it (Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig), perhaps taking away the visibility it deserves.
With a Gothic cathedral that is well worth visiting as the reviewer did in 1997, this town has created jobs with the chemical industry.
And it is the latter that has generated fear, desolation, surrender, frustration as the two Germans have managed to demonstrate with this sublime musical exercise.
We are faced with structures that wander through precisely conceived sonic spaces, stimulating references and entrances to circuits of asbestos dust which falls within robust movements, desolate, abandoned heavens to specify the vividness of human mediocrity.
The duo's minds become laboratories of images, obstinacies, voluminous discharges of wilted flowers, where everything necessarily makes itself capable of impregnating bleakness, to lead it, back to the wall, to the consequent shooting.
Synthesizers dominate, in the turbid flight of shortness of breath that is positioned here as the last obstacle before death.
Vocals come from both members of the band, capable of stimulating seductive suggestions, in the dutifully depressing exercise which enhances the quality of music that is enveloping, rigid, robotic and able to lead us to limb-bending dances.
Arteries are filled with a certified ability to propagate an artistic frenzy with sound dominating the structure of the compositions: one continually travels back and forth in time, a bonfire that is frozen by Coldwave imprints which are cleverly almost hidden, as with certain Ebm fragments.
One finds the immense aptitude to change rhythms, giving the preposed section considerable range, making it easier for the melodic textures to rage on our enraptured listening. And it is a perfect marriage by associations of necessity that take root song after song: only in splendid musical Germany such an intense and deflagrating album could be born. There is no need for distortion to feel the sky crashing down on us: the two take it with their black fingers and bring it down, generating din and lightning in our quivering hearts.
The atmospheres sound like multiple flocks in a gathering at the end of existence: something deeply sacred gushes from the compositions to certify the absence of an escape route. And it is a funeral celebrated in such distant anticipation. But we, by making the unforgivable mistake of dancing, believe we are securing ourselves without wanting to give space to apocalyptic and gloomy lyrics, where disillusionment becomes the absolute ruler.
We will pay the price on the day when, instead, our eyes will bend over these words as heavy as slabs of marble.
Oh well: may time be granted the power to punish us.
If we want to be a bit attentive then we have at least to give space to the observation, in the economy of the instruments, of how the bass is decisive, with its propensity to make Postpunk its master, point of reference and sublime actor in the recitation of its entire collection of samples.
And the guitar? It appears much less, but it knows how to do it as if to grant the future a minimal but extraordinary memory.
I have already mentioned synth and it is good not to forget arrangements, like hasty comets waiting for the crash into the void.
This record manages to arouse enthusiasm within a toxic cloud and it is time to describe it, song by song.
Song by Song
1 Vortex
And it is initial thunder, tremor and prophecy sniffing each other, a hypothetical place being shown amid chilled fumes and a woman's intense voice blowing, leaping in persuasive tones within this slow, syncopated rhythm.
2 Rainy
A wild display of lucid but somber sounds, the watery dance comes down from the sky to alarm our eyes, with a peripheral guitar surrounding the breath. And it is Darkwave and Postpunk in perfect conjunction, to cloud the senses within the dilated dust of a music that resists the onslaught of time.
3 Blue Eyes
Bass and guitar in enthusiastic parade open the dance of blue eyes only in appearance: melancholy wins the duel and sits, victorious, on the face, while a heartbreaking synth kisses notes like windshield wipers activated because tears must be wiped away.
4 Vase
A voice with a malevolent reverberation comes, in the march that advances hypnotic, slowly. Vocals seize the forces and place a successful attack. And we have an earthquake in slow motion, glacial.
5 Feel
The male voice arrives after a few seconds and it is astonishment. A rhythmic liturgy makes us dance like extravagant, inebriated puppets, everything becomes dark and dramatic, vocals are able to oppress, breaking down resistance to leave room for the erotic play of guitar and synth in a state of grace.
6 Banish Sorrows
New ballistic gem: the duo creates another edifice of perfect and balanced sounds to come into contact with a splendid crescendo, a loop that only keyboards can generate. And it is a chase in the hallways of fears.
7 Angeldust
The 80s, cleaned up, sanitized, updated and corrected, find peace in this track, absolute dominator, able to make us shorten our breath. Like an apocalyptic rumble, the voice caresses atoms of seconds with its high register and it is pure sensory madness.
8 Your Skin Turns Blue
The deception of the first few seconds would seem to take us towards the dramatic atmospheres of Joy Division. Then, however, it goes elsewhere, with an agony similar to that of the Mancunian band as its gift. Chaos and rapture kiss each other.
9 Hinter Schweren Gedanken.
Echoes of Pankow's early ebm flashes seem willing to reiterate the awe, the love of the present record. Then one runs with combat boots into the cold water of this music that becomes emblematically even colder.
10 Phantom
The breath sinks under the dome of Phantom, the crucifix slowly falling inside our feeling that there is no more time to dream. The end of this strategic and stratospheric album comes with a decadent singing, like the cry of a wounded siren. And the musical notes are the place of all dissolution, the total collapse, the perfect farewell.
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
21st December 2022
https://detritirecords.bandcamp.com/album/left-for-pleasure-human-contract
https://open.spotify.com/album/1KYEQvojuIn6ufSjNpDuv0?si=otbNk95CR9SUL1mud-yGFg
Adoro 🖤
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