This issue features 10 albums. It has been a few months since the last issue of survey of the electroscape, which means many of the albums spinning around here haven’t been written about. You can dig into these albums by revisiting our “Album of the Day” scrolling on our site.
Explore. Discover.
Albums are in alphabetical order.
Abyssal Arcana by Draven
Abyssal Arcana by Draven is dark in sound, sure, but it’s dark in spirit. Themes of possession and deadly lullabies sharp as a switch blade are prevalent on songs such as “Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”, “Demonic Incantation Blues”, and “A Horrorsynth Symphony.” The percussion is ominous, lashing, and alarming, creating a sense of danger of otherworldly kinds, such as on “BloodGod” and “The Conjuring”, and is high tempo, with a rave element, such as on “Silver Coffin.” It’s full of contrast – frightening, ghostly melodies at battle with grinding, big and dreadful synths, and gritty textures churning. Each song plays like a story, with moments to sit in the discomfort, just before enduring the inevitable. Abyssal Arcana never stops. Your muscles will tense, jaw will clench. You’ll shift in your seat, look over your shoulder, and reach for the light, only to find none. There’s no relief until the last note fades into the darkness.
Artificial Anxiety by Ashurei
Artificial Anxiety is the debut LP by Glasgow-based artist, Ashurei. This album has so much depth to explore. The songwriting has an element of surprise. Just when you think you know what’s around the corner, something else appears. The mood is dark like a heavy weight on your shoulders, attributable to the thick, grimy, distorted textures from which the soundscape is built, yet pop and rave elements occasionally peek through. Moments of chaos, lashing beats, nightmarish and penetrating melodies are plentiful. Always engaging.
Cat Out of Hell by Cat Temper
Kitties, stay back! The big paws are playing keys tonight! Synths that claw, riffs that roar! It’s Cat Out of Hell, the massively powerful, highly energetic new LP from Cat Temper, set to release summer 2022. Cat Temper is known for his unique style of synthpunk that aggressively and unpredictably pounces, known and beloved as meowave. But Cat Out of Hell is different. So, what does it sound like? Imagine cats playing synths, guitars, and drums up on the stage with big hair and bandanas, an ode to rock n’ roll, glam, prog rock, and dare I say, a sprinkling of grunge and nu metal, all in one place. You’ll hear big, scorching riffs on songs such as “Furever Young” and sharp, heart throbbing keys on songs such as “Feral Angel.” You’ll feel the rush of a high-speed car chase down 8-bit alleys on songs such as “Purradise By the Dashboard Light” and “Getting Away With Meowder.” Cat Temper always invites a sense of imaginative adventure in his songwriting, perhaps most salient on albums such as Digital Soul and Furbidden Planet, and there is plenty of adventure here, such as on “One More Hiss” and “Whiskered Youth.” Cat Out of Hell is meant to be played on the big speakers, so crank that volume knob to 10 and don’t stop until the amplifier smokes!
Catharsis by Distinct
Catharsis by Distinct will be released on Electric Dream Records on June 3, 2022. It’ll transport you to another place, as if you stepped into the black hole on the cover art, only to return 80 minutes later. The music unfolds like vocals with lyrics that were never written, a soundtrack to a movie that has never been filmed, introspective story telling with no words. The most striking element of Catharsis is the songwriting. It is open, patient, and dramatic. It feels improvised, turning in directions one could never anticipate, yet feel perfectly right, somehow simultaneously linear and non-linear. The soundscape is open, built around ominous humming rising from the abyss within, percussion that taps, pounds, and batters, as lonely melodies wail like the fizzling of electricity in the rain. The sounds are reminiscent of cyberpunk but stretched through time like thoughts crossing the synaptic divide, biological membranes reverberating in slow motion and brilliant color. Catharsis could equally be written from a future place, a caged room in the mind, or under anesthesia while being transformed into part machine, all of which feel dark, cold, empty, yet pure and honest.
Circle and Light by Liquid Modern
Circle and Light is the highly anticipated full-length album from Liquid Modern, and it embodies the essence of what music is all about for me, which is connection to self and others, expression of emotion through sound, melodies, and lyricism. The production and vocals fit together like hand in glove. The mood is anthemic retro pop with dance elements, and hints of disco and funk in places, such as on “Don’t Say It.” The vocals are like a key to your heart, building you up at times, and bringing you to your knees at others. The lyricism is meant to be digested. It’s rooted in the human experience, often centering on the complexity of relationships, heartache, self-liberation, growth, and evolution, but it is also historically relevant and powerful, notably so on “Lack of Access,” with lyrics such as we don’t have the power for changing, so you just keep rearranging and the whispering of a dire outlook – this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
Darling by Venator
Venator has returned with Darling, and it’s a breath of fresh air. It’s a thematic collection of songs, each like a chapter in a book on the most contemplative topic of them all – love. It’s intimate, genuine, and replenishing. Venator orchestrates a variety of moods which, at times, provide empty, mediative, spaces expansive as the sea and grassy fields and, at times, you are at the mercy of the emotion conveyed. Vocals are soulful, such as on “Aisha” and “All the Tattooed Girls,” and originate in the gut, such as on “Find Somewhere Else to Sleep” and “Deeper” while narratives on “There Was a Dream Where You Whispered in My Ear” and “444” tell stories of heartache and the hard lessons love too often teaches. With elements of R&B, soul, hip hop, rap, and indie rock, Venator created an album that is classic and modern. Read our piece about Venator’s electronic music story of Victor Moore here
Let's! by Mecha Maiko
Mecha Maiko is Toronto-based musician, Hayley Stewart, and her latest release, Let’s!, is retro pop that rings the bells of the heart, pokes the mind, and inspires the body to move. The sound will hooks you from the opening moments of “Apathy,” which feels like dropping the needle and stepping back in time. Hayley’s vocals will lure you in with warmth but can be draw from cold, quivering places as well, with melodies that gracefully wind through the valleys, all set alongside infectious production. The textures in the percussion elements shine on Let’s!, which are rich and varied and, at times add an element of psychedelic synth pop that perfectly embody the cover art, most salient on “Alive.” The most striking quality of Let’s is its depth, layer after layer coming to the surface with each listen, in production that is remarkably varied yet entirely coherent, and relatable lyricism often centering on relationships, such as on “Trust” but also contemplative in nature, such as on “End of Your Life” and “I Can’t Wait.”
Only Ever In Dreams by Soft Replica
On Only Ever In Dreams, Soft Replica invites you to traverse a digitally laced dream. The soundscape is saturated with interweaving melodies that continuously emerge and dissolve, especially salient on “Halcyon Again,” “You’ll Miss These Moments Too,” and “She’s Still Under.” The beats are incredibly dynamic, unfolding like balloons plunging into the ground, compressing before springing upward with new life. The atmosphere is surreal, sometimes playing like disconnected moments in time, yet entirely continuous and conscious, not unlike a dream, when the mind can disconnect from the physical world, so beautifully exemplified on “Valerie’s Dream.” The fluidity of the movement shines throughout, like traveling through tunnels with no beginning or ending, showcased on “Weightless,” and eliciting a sensation of endlessly falling, such as on the aptly titled “Endless Reverie.”
The Lovers by ∑V∑RYTHING plays like a pendulum continuously swinging in one direction, never reaching its end, never returning to where it once was. Imagine that for a moment as the opening track, “The Dreamer,” plays. The atmosphere is difficult to pin-point, which only enhances its intrigue, as the listener wades through a dense soundscape. It is dark and dire, yet dreamy, moods that occasionally collide in what feels like a fantastical reality, such as on the title track. The Lovers is a “choose your own adventure” album. Press play, close your eyes, and go any place your imagination will take you.
Ze Luciferi Y'all by Jnny Cobra
When you press play on Ze Luciferi Y’all, you encounter head-spinning rhythms built from layers of precision mechanics, bone-on-bone, gear-grinding textures, and raw energy at the steering wheel. What Jnny Cobra does so elegantly, though, is carve trenches in your brain with emotionally driven melodies, which weigh heavily on tracks such as “Merchants of Obscenity” and “Nights In Hell (The Anti Everything And Everyone Song).” Jnny Cobra populated Ze Luciferi Y’all with melodies that can be as sweet as a lullaby set against the anthem of the devil’s marching band. Not too long ago, Jnny Cobra released Straight Ballin’ The Left Hand Path which still gets regular play at the electroscape. See what we had to say about it in Issue 4.