Natural Life Essence - Micro Ambient/MicroAmbient 2

CYAN/Liquid Frog Records: 2019/2021

Can't have a 'macro' without first having a 'micro'. I mean, you technically could, but generally speaking, folks start with the 'micro' before moving on to the 'macro'. Concepts of 'micro' are so common, it's permeated pop culture far more than 'macro'. Gander: microscope, microwave, micro-organism, microphone, Microsoft. Now try flipping those with a 'macro'. Don't work, do it? Instead we get telescope, or mega fauna, or comedy-sized microphone, or Evil Corpo'. Heck, even in units of measurement, we have micrometres and micro-litres, but no 'macro' variant, just 'mega'.

Even if we are to accept 'macro' as an opposite measurement against 'micro', where exactly does the demarcation end and begin? Size is all relative, right? Typically we take a normal human as the median, everything larger being 'macro', and anything smaller being 'micro', which is fair enough. Sure, its completely biased to our perspective, but we're the ones measuring things to our scale. Should we encounter something more dominate than the scale we use, I'm sure we'd appropriately adjust. Or not, stubbornness one of humanity's defining characteristics.

So where does that leave ambient music? Like, it's easy to point out when something sounds 'micro' versus 'macro' (or whatever specific terminology you wish to utilize) - if I was to play a 36 piece after an Andrew Heath composition, the contrast would be stark indeed. At what point does noodly synth drones pass from the 'micro' to the 'macro' though? Can't help but feel like that's one of those impossible lines to pin down, something entirely subjective to interpretation and perspectives of one's own experience with the music. If anyone can point towards The Perfect Ambient Track That Divides Between The Micro & The Macro, let me hear it!

ANYhow, Juan Pablo released the first Micro Ambient while he was still peddling his wares through CYAN, so fairly early into N:L:E's lifespan. I wouldn't really call the music offered on this album especially 'micro', mostly bright synth pads performed in a minimalist fashion – more meditative than anything. I guess compared to his regular output to this point, it's more pure ambient than his forays into downbeat, but even tracks like Micro-Path and Micro-Lake have enough of a rhythmic pulse to keep these being an entirely lowercase session. They sure wouldn't sound of place on one of the Macro Ambient albums.

You'd think Mr. Giacovino would reassess what a 'micro ambient' album should entail after exploring the 'macro' side of things, and he kinda' does with the sequel. MicroAmbient 2 is certainly more subtle compared to the first, though not without its own rhythmic moments too. Just, y'know, performed in a smaller fashion compared to most other N:L:E music.

Having listened to all these 'micro' and 'macro' ambient session, I find the first is the best, if for no other reason than it feels more like a complete album. Which makes sense, since it was released on a different label than Juan Pablo's own.

Avith Ortega - Metastasis

self-release: 2018

(a Patreon Request)

I've known Mr. Ortega for a while now. Not personally or anything like that, but the typical social media connection chatter that occurs when folks cross paths via similar interest groups. Felt it necessary to at least clear that up, just in case some folks claim 'paid for' bias or whatever in covering a Patreon request from him. Silly, I know, but there's always someone like that out there.

That said, I honestly had no idea what sort of music made up his repertoire. For some reason, I assumed techno, just because that was typically the sort of music most producers made in those circles – maybe something a little IDM leaning? Glancing at the cover art for Metastasis, however, that notion quickly evaporated. A style colder, then, perhaps reflective, moody, atmospheric. Ah, dub techno, right? Not right? Well gosh, better just listen to the darn thing.

So first track Dissemination Of A Belief is little more than a small slice of dark drone, the sort of thing that would open any number of Cryo Chamber albums. That's followed upon by Unfortunate Destiny, which is relatively moody as well, but with its trip-hop rhythms and warbly synth leads, really lends itself to a Boards-like vibe. Not so on the nose as, say, Faex Optim, but definitely sharing the same lane. So, wait, is Metastasis gonna' be a dark ambient excursion or a melancholic shoe-hop session? A little of both!

Actually, what this really is, is music inspired by the Silent Hill series. I've never played the games, but I know plenty about them through gaming culture osmosis, and with that knowledge going through Metastasis on a second playthrough, it makes total sense. All during my first run, I couldn't help but feel like I was listening to music from some sort of psychological thriller anime, what with most tracks lasting but a few minutes long. Tone would sometimes radically shift too, a caustic piece like An Erratic Entity jumping to something almost peppy and chipper in Palliative Room with but a brief spit of sonic doodling in Surrounding Dense Breeze between. As said, I've never played any Silent Hill, but I've played more than enough games to have situations change on a dime with music supporting such tonal switches.

Guess that brings the question whether you need to be a fan of Silent Hill to enjoy Metastasis. As someone who didn't make that initial link but still got the vibe regardless, I'd say no. That said, this album probably works best taken as a collection of pieces inspired and intended for an unrealized game or show rather than its own entity. At eighteen tracks long and not even an hour runtime, many sections will pass by as little more than window dressing or transitional snippets bridging the set pieces together. Like, holy cow, but am I ever wandering about some pre-rendered city backdrop as a low-polygon character while Morbid Curiosity plays out! No, wait, that's Legend of Dragoon.

Mindsphere - Mental Triplex: Presence - Mindream - Beyond

Suntrip Records: 2016/2017/2020

Instead of releasing three separate albums over a span of four years, Ali Akgün settled for nothing less than a trilogy magnum opus. Which means, for the sake of brevity, I can knock off three more Suntrip CDs for the price of one review! Eh, you say I'm not doing his artistic vision justice in giving Every. Single. Album its fair shake? Now, now, I know you don't really believe that. It's Suntrip we're dealing with here, a label we're well versed with the ins and outs by now. When I say, “Mental Triplex offers more neo-goa trance music as you'd expect from Suntrip”, that about sums it up, doesn't it. All that's left are some particulars and call it a day.

Actually, that's only true for two of these, which is a relief. Yeah, there's differences between Presence and Beyond, but only if you're versed enough in psy trance's micro genre aesthetics to notice them. The third album out of three though, Mindream, does something I've never heard any Suntrip session do: it's an honest-to-Ra chill-out album! Holy cow, I've heard, maybe, three proper downtempo tunes out of the label's entire catalogue thus far. What sort of favours did Ali have to pull to get the green light on that? Oh, that whole 'I'm making a concept trilogy, one part of which requires some slow time' idea. Not to say there potentially aren't other chill-out CDs in Suntrip's discography, but having gone through more than half of it now, odds are growing ever more slight on that.

What's actually weird about this, is that Mindream is the middle album out of this trilogy. Usually a downtempo disc would be the last, representing the comedown of a heavy night out. It makes sense as a follow-up to Presence, your standard end-to-end round of retro goa from Suntrip. Mindsphere's style is fairly simple, sometimes leaning into regular ol' trance, and never needlessly complicated or overstuffed with excessive wibble. I could see his tunes sharing compilation duty on an old school CD with the likes of Psygone and Bypass Unit.

So Ali follows that with a chill-out album, but instead of going with psy-chill or psy dub as most of his contemporaries would, he goes retro here as well. Like, way retro. I'm talkin' Jarre retro! Not really Berlin School or New Age retro, mind you, most of the tunes on Mindream still featuring squiggly synths or burbly acid straight out of the Megadog era. There's just as much prominence of sweeping modern classical synths and simple pulsing sequencers though, blurring the line of where Klause Schulz and downbeat Astralasia meet.

So where does that leave CD3 of the Mental Triplex trilogy? Out on a limb, if I'm honest, Beyond basically carrying on where Presence left off. It's still retro goa, just more on the trippier, psy side of the genre. Again, perfectly fine stuff, but even less to talk about within the context of the whole package.

Paleowolf - Megafauna Rituals

self-release: 2017

When I first – and last – covered Paleowolf, this was his most recent item, one that stuck with me for years. “If I ever return to this project,” thought I, “this is the album I'll get first!” And sure, it took me many years to actually get around to it, but by g'ar, I was true to my word. He's since released many more albums, including a pseudo-sequel called Cenozoic (all the tracks titles are also megafauna of the paleolithic era), but that's barely scratching the surface of what Scorpio V has done since.

Yeah, there's still Metatron Omega, the dark ambient project that first got him noticed by Cryo Chamber. Seems from that and Paleowolf, he found inspiration from all manner of Indo-Asia-European ritualistic cultures. You got Monasterium Imperi, Shogun's Castle, Gaetir The Mountainkeeper, Grailknight, Forest Of Yore (more of a Celtic ambient thing), and Orkforge. Yes, Orkforge, as in World Of Warcraft beasties! Gotta' get that dungeon synth side-project some sort of wicked-cool handle, right?

Anyhow, Megafauna Rituals. We'll never know with certainty what relationship pre-history humanity had with the largest animals of their era had, but we've made many educated guesses. Paleowolf seems intent on exploring the parts of our psyche that not only saw these massive beasts as potential sources of resources, but on equal footing within the food chain, both the hunters and the hunted, depending on how pissed off you'd make them. Perhaps even drawing upon their instinctive prowess in getting psyched for some pagan dance. A time when there were no need for heavenly gods, for they already walked among you as the lords of your terrain.

Which is why opening with a track like Aurochs seems a little weird to me. If you don't know, the aurochs were essentially the prehistoric ancestor to the modern domesticated bovine. Certainly an important animal in the legacy of civilization, but not one that I'd imagine inspires fear or reverence in prehistoric man. Then again, they were often depicted in cave drawings, so what do I know? Guess when I think megafauna, I'm thinking cave bears and dire wolves and sabertooth cats and megalacerosesesesss. Them auroch bulls were big, but not mammoth big, y'know?

Aside from Totem, which mostly utilizes chants, Megafauna Rituals is broken between two types of tracks: deep meditative pieces, and 'getting hype for the hunt' drumming ones. Unsurprisingly, the pieces with predator titles (Sabertooth, Direwolf) prominently feature the latter, while the ones with herbivore animals (Aurochs, Megalaceros, Mammoth) the former. Surprisingly, Cavebear seems to straddle the two, but I guess how you'd deal with one of them depends on how ornery they are that given day. And yes, there are sounds of the animals within these tracks too, though typically brief, subdued and distant. Like, you're out here celebrating their existence, but you sure don't want them getting near your camp fire either.

As for the rest of Paleowolf, hopefully it won't be another Ice Age before I return to him.

Fatima Al Qadiri - Medieval Femme

Hyperdub: 2021

I'll never fake the UK funky on claiming I know all the ins and outs on whatever the post-dubstep, future garage, grime-trap, micro-genre demarcations of that scene entail. Even the dedicated bloggers and scribes that broke sonic styles down to the quantum level never seem confident they've properly classified everything out there. Have you any idea what levels of autistic you'd have to be to do so? For sure I'm partially on the spectrum, and no way in Hell I care about this stuff to such a degree.

Which may be why I was drawn to this particular album from Fatima Al Qadiri on Hyperdub. I was already browsing about the label's Bandcamp in search of music outside my comfort zone, which you can always count on with this famed print. Yet something hit me as remarkably familiar when I clicked a few samples on Medieval Femme. I couldn't immediately place it though, so the only way to figure it out further was to buy the darn record, give it some uninterrupted attention. Well, such as my attention can remain uninterrupted these days...

Fatima had already shown an ear for more 'ethnically' charged bass music, her debut on Hyperdub (Asiatisch) drawing influence from the Far East even though she hailed from the Far Afro-West (Senegal). Even her less adventurous first EP on UNO - Genre-Specific Xperience - couldn't help but have an exotic flair to it from all the steel drum sounds utilized. No matter what μ-genre folks have tried placing her in (Juke! Grime! Electro! Leftfield! Deconstructed club...?), one thing that's been consistent is an ethereal overtone to her works.

And I think that's what drew me into Medieval Femme over her other albums. This one leans about as heavy into that sound as anything I sampled from her catalogue. Yeah, there's exotic instruments, haunting vocalizations, and sinewy synths, but all presented in a dense layer of ethereal atmosphere. In fact, save a single track that has barely a minute's worth of electronic beat (Sheba), there's absolutely nothing on here that could tie the music to any of UK bass' usual assortment of styles. The layers of decaying dub, you say? Yeah, that could connect to Hyperdub's more experimental branch of artists, but is often still tied to the streets of South London, not so alien and foreign as heard on Medieval Femme.

Still, even if Fatima's music here didn't sound Hyperdub familiar, it did sound familiar in another way. A Waveform way, surprisingly. Yes, if I had to make any comparison to other music within my own collection, Medieval Femme reminds me of that label's brief flirtation with meditative exotica acts like TUU and Skin To Skin, though with a more Arabic bent. Not that these are the only artists to do it, just the ones I can namedrop in an instant. Take that for what you will, but regardless, Medieval Femme remains an intriguing record, even if it doesn't tidily fit within Hyperdub's general sound.

Mondo Grosso - 何度でも新しく生まれる

Cutting Edge: 2017

(a Patreon Request)

All these requests for Shinichi Osawa projects have remained chronologically consistent, each following the next as they came out. Now we're a dozen years later, as though the prior decade never was. I get it though, the time between Next Wave and 何度でも新しく生まれる possibly some of his most publicized work.

The One released under his own name penetrated Western markets, not to mention high profile remix jobs for the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Felix Da Housecat, and Duck Sauce (don't deny it, the Armand van Helden novelty side-project was huge at the time). Meanwhile, back in his home country, ol' Osawa-san was having a remarkable run with a bevy of j-pop singers. I'm talkin' Namie Amuro, Nami Tamaki, and Ai Otsuka! Okay, I don't know if these ladies are the tippest of the top, my knowledge of idol singers utterly bunk, but if Wiki says they're popular, I believe it. Oh, and Shinichi even got involved with one of those Korean multi-person troupes too (After School), because of course he would.

Point being, he was plenty busy following his last Mondo Grosso album, and didn't seem likely returning to his first project anytime soon. Still, that urge to get back to making music with a 'classier' edge, house on a deeper level, jazz on a soulful vibe... None of that maximal electro-pop that was making him bank, in other words. I guess after spending so much time immersed within mainstream decadence, getting back to a sound with some intimate emotion was growing ever more urgent. Must be why he titled the Mondo Grosso comeback Reborn Again And Always Starting New. And yes, I promise to refer to this album as such for the remainder.

Actually, I'm rather shocked at just how Japanese this album is. Oh, the music is mostly 'western', in so much as any house or soul music in the Land Of The Rising Sun can be. Yet all the featured singers stick to the native tongue, all the guest musicians are local, and the whole presentation feels specifically catered to folks living on the island. Absolutely no hope or pretense of having Reborn... make any impact on foreign markets, a far cry from the early days of Mondo Grosso getting rinsed by American house DJs. Yet if this was a tactful marketing ploy, the trick worked, the record earning Shinichi his highest Japanese chart action ever. Okay, not as high as his singles with pop idols, but you get what I mean.

So ...Always Starting New is certainly a classy album, but I can't help feel almost too much. Despite offering house ranging from deep-tech to opulent disco, with vibrant R&B between, it doesn't leap out much either. The wild swings of genre dabbling heard in those other Mondo Grosso records has been jettisoned for music that's safe and comforting. Which is fine if that's the aim, and I'm sure Shinichi's at an age where exploring such eclecticism isn't as interesting. Just loses some of the unexpected thrill the process, y'know?

Eri Nobuchika - Nobuchikaeri

Fearless Records: 2005

(a Patreon Request)

Ol' Shinichi was doing well for himself as Mondo Grosso, but if he really wanted to make some scratch, he'd have to dip his hand into his nation's most popular music scene, j-pop singers. Well, not quite, but he did start dabbling in a pure producer's role, having some decent success with a jazz vocalist named Yuki Kitayama under the performance name bird.

Having wrapped up his latest Mondo Grosso album Next Wave, Osawa-san must have felt the itch to have another crack at producing a new singer. Trouble is, in a music industry that quickly and frequently gobbles up promising young talents into its pop idol factory, there weren't many potential prospects for Shinichi to choose from. Like, bird was almost a fluke, flying under the radar in jazz circles long enough for him to connect with her. To find someone within the usual pools without the majors plucking them first though? Why, she'd have to be someone that didn't want to be part of that machine in the first place.

Right, that's just speculation, but I find it funny that, according to legend (re: Wiki), Eri Nobuchika very nearly didn't get picked up, neglecting to provide a forwarding address with her provided demo for one of Japan's star search programs. It all worked out though, Shinichi eager to work with her, even getting a big debut roll-out for her first record. I'm talking multiple singles, spots in video games and anime credits, and even a full remix album with global producers on the rub (Akufen! Röyksopp! Azzido Da Bass! Linus Loves?). Nobuchikaeri would also feature full productions from Osawa-san himself, with opulent orchestral acid jazz, pumping electro house, piano ballads, guitar jams... Oh, and Eri would get to sing too.

Yeah, to be blunt, this still sounds mostly like a Mondo Grosso record, just with a singular guest vocalist rather than a clutch of them. Absolutely Eri has chances in the spotlight, mostly in the ballads (first half of Sketch For Summer, 陽だまり, 靴を鳴らそう). Other tracks though, especially the clubbier ones, she's rather buried in the mix. Granted, that may just be a consequence of production standards of the time, a grotesque casualty of the '00s Loudness Wars making lots of dance-pop music utterly bricked. I dunno', there's simply a vibe of Shinichi, meticulous studio hand that he is, being far more prominent in the final product than he should be if you're looking to debut a new singer in Japan's extremely over-crowded market.

Besides, I'm not sure Eri was totally committed to becoming a pop singer in the first place. The album barely cracked the charts, and she mostly retreated from the music world after, a couple token records released the past two decades since. Plus, that whole 'not leaving a forwarding address on a demo tape' thing. Sounds like a lark that got carried away, y'know? This debut album's fine, sure, but more for fans of Shinichi Osawa than Eri Nobuchika.

Anthéne - Mainland

Archives: 2023

Irony? Coincidence? Divine comedy? Whatever you want to call it, it sure is... something, that I no sooner learn that Polar Seas has shuttered that I'm finally reviewing an item from the chap that ran the label, Brad Deschamps. It wasn't his sole outlet, of course, taking his Anthéne project across many prints over the past decade. Dronarivm, Cathedral Transmissions, Sound In Silence, Lillerne Tape Club, Pyramid Blood Recordings, Home Normal, Shimmering Moods Records, Ambientologist, giraffe tapes, whitelabrecs, oscarson, Hidden Vibes... to namedrop just a dozen. Still, Polar Seas was the little corner of the ambient world he cut out for himself, bringing in some quality talent along the way. I'd like to think it made enough of an impression that folks mourn its passing. At least one person I know does.

Fortunately, there's always other areas to hawk one's wares, and for dang near every modern ambient composer, that one-stop shop seems to now be Archives. Okay, it's still almost exclusively Mr. Mena's Warmth material, but others pop in from time to time. And in the summer of 2023, Mr. Deschamps did as well.

As for the music, it's about what you'd expect of the players involved. Tranquil atmosphere, sparse sonic space, a touch of melancholic vibe as though reflecting on some distant memory of a time lost. The main thing that leaped out at me was some gentle slide guitar action, which will always get your KLF Chill Out triggers flaring (even if Harold Budd beat them to the 'ambient by way of slide guitar' idea by nearly a decade). It's not exactly twangy, which is good, but more of a gentle caress adding to the backing pads and soft orchestral swells. And the snowflaked static. And overdubbed fuzz. And layered drone. Y'know, the usual shoegazey ambient stuff, just with some comforting melody in support.

Wish I had more to say of Mainland, but music as simple and straight-forward as this doesn't offer me much else to critique. Including a Warmth remix of the opening track, the nine tracks breeze by in a stunningly brisk forty-six minutes, sounding as pleasant as you'd expect from your usual Archives fare. The tone does turn somewhat more uplifting compared to the rather sombre start, so you do get a nice little emotional journey out of it, subtle though it may be. Perhaps that's all that's needed though, Mainland playing so far in the background such that it registers as subconscious thought, requiring neither deep concentration nor attentive study.

I guess I should confess that, like those Filteria albums, I almost missed this one in my queue too. For some darn reason, I neglected downloading my Bandcamp purchase, and because Archives doesn't do spine-print on their digipaks, completely forgot to slot this in my CD rack alphabetically. It was only a random perusal through my Bandcamp library that reminded me that, oh hey, I got another 'M' album waiting in the wings. Yes, even my OCD fails me sometimes.

N:L:E - Macro Ambient & 2

Liquid Frog Records: 2020/2022

Y'know, when I think 'Macro Ambient', I'm thinking, like... MACRO. Ambient music that's almost the opposite of what its original aim t'was. Synth pads and droning harmonics so upfront and in yo' face, you're almost overwhelmed by it. Nothing so ignorable such that it could ever dissolve into wallpaper music or abstract conceptualization. Ambient so overwrought, you wonder how it could ever be technically classified as ambient music, beyond its beatless nature. So Dennis Huddleston's 36 project, then. Yeah, pretty much.

Was I expecting that going into N:L:E's duo Macro Ambient releases? Not really, no. Of the various sonic avenues I've heard Mr. Giacovino explore now, going something as 'maximal' as the Dreamloops series was never on the radar. For sure he could lay some dronescapes on rather thick, particularly several of his Caravan Of Healing Sounds releases, but to really tug at those heavenly, emotional heartstrings too? As I said, not typically the lane Juan Pablo traverses.

So I was honestly surprised when I did hear something that gets pretty darn close almost right from the jump. Macro Ambient 1 starts with gradually emergent bleepy notes, soon joined by a requisite pad that sounds rather like an ethereal flute or similar woodwind. Really lovely stuff, but also remarkably familiar too. It didn't take me long to remember whear I heard it too, a tune so memorably burned into my membrane from repeated plays. T'was towards the end of Moss Garden's The Fabric Of Sentinel, a dang-near perfect capper on their debut album Understanding Holy Ghosts. Is it one-for-one? Not quite, no, but darn close enough that I can't help but suspect Juan Pablo was at least inspired by it, if only subconsciously (he had to at least be aware of it, given he's come within the orbit of Lee Norris now). Or maybe it's a certain preset common in synths ambient producers use, which just happens to sound dang-near perfect when played in a particular chord sequence.

That's about the biggest talking point I have for Macro Ambient though. The first four tracks mostly build upon that, though recede deeper into the more meditative side of N:L:E's muse, 4 bringing back more of the bleepiness while going extra 'macro' for a climax (re: adds some beats). The second of these two releases surprisingly brings some variety among its four tracks, each track distinct from the other rather than continuations of the same theme. 5 is the most typical of a chill N:L:E cut, but 6 gets almost electro, beats incredibly crisp and punchy compared to his usual dubby rhythms. Almost reminds me of the Subnautica score. Following that is a twenty-two minute long pure ambient outing, nothing 'macro' about it beyond its length, while 8 gets back to more standard N:L:E fare, just on the proper dubby side of things.

I guess between the two, I liked the second one more, just for the variety. But man, the way that first one triggers my memories... So it goes.

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Blood Music: 2021

So, synthwave. That sure was a thing for a hot (Miami) minute, huh. Not that its completely gone away or anything, but it hasn't been on the tips of folks' thoughts for a while now, mostly receding to the furthest corners of niche musical interests from whence it came. Which isn't surprising, a style of music so deliciously retro never having much hope being more than what it was. For sure a few tried doing other things with it, but far, far more were content recycling the same ol' tropes, over-saturating a scene that really couldn't support it. How many synthwave net-labels have been left to gather dust on derelict servers? Wow, given some of the bleakier, cyberpunk aspects of the genre, it almost seems like a fitting end.

Perhaps no more so apparent of synthwave's slump is the relative absence of one of the scene's brightest stars in Perturbator. It may not be that long ago that he released Lustful Sacraments - indeed, just four years. The gap between this and The Uncanny Valley was even longer, though again, Pandemic Years likely extended that one. Still, that's just a mere two LPs in the past decade, and for a genre that was known to have a nigh inexhaustible output rate among all its main players, that's surprisingly skint for one of its leading acts.

On the other hand, listening to Lustful Sacraments, you get the sense Mr. Kent outgrew the genre he helped popularize, creative drive demanding something more than pure retro synth nods with a thrasher's edge. It's certainly his most ambitious record, diving deeper into the realms of post-rock ambience and darkwave goth as only a man with more studio toys to play with can offer. No longer restricted by a few keyboards, here's real guitars, and real drums, and real singers.

And right off the top, I'll say this album is probably the best mastered one in all of Perturbator's catalogue. Much as I've liked the man's work throughout the years, my one consistent criticism has been just how bricked a lot of the music's presented. True, part of the whole underground, gritty charm, but fatiguing after a while too. James must have realized, in shooting for a record with more atmosphere to it, he was gonna' have to let those drums and synths breathe, give more sonic space for electric guitars and Maniac 2121's voice to carry off cathedral ceilings. The result is an album filled more with songs than tracks, if you catch my drift, and certainly more progressive than what came before.

Granted, that leaves Lustful Sacraments lacking the immediacy his earlier work had, but there are still a few tunes capturing the synthwave spirit of old. Well, okay, actually only one, Death Of The Soul, while Excess has as much influence from new wave punk as it does outrun. Glimmers of darksynth still shine in other tracks though, between all the melodramatic strings and echoing guitars and propulsive drumming.