Antimatter "Lights Out" CD
[The End]
Like last time this project is driven by Duncan Patterson (formerly of Anathema) and Mick Moss, with some help in the vocal department from the superb singers Hayley Windsor and Michelle Richfield. Moss' vocals play a larger role this time out, and the music is perhaps a bit more organic on occasion as far as exploring a more central use of guitars and bass (not to mention warmer electronics), but there's definitely still an ethereal ambient sort of electronic vibe going on with some programmed beats (And possibly live percussion in addition?) and dense keyboards. Though I also feel like there's more of a dark progressive rock inspiration happening, more so than was the case on "Saviour". Half of the songs border on a lengthy eight minutes while the other half are between four and five minutes, and the group still utilizes acoustic and clean guitars almost exclusively, but "The Art of a Soft Landing" bursts into distorted guitars with a lot of sustain and almost grating textures to some degree - very fucking cool. Distorted guitars make brief appearances in the more often quiet "In Stone" as well, achieving a very suitable dynamic balance - sadly the computerized vocals (literally, spoken by one of those programs that can generate speech from text) ruin the atmosphere of the track as they're a bit cheesy and unnecessary... I'm not sure why the hell they made the decision to slap those vocals right in the middle of the song!? Oh well. The recording is perfect. I have no complaints. Everything is warm and full, the mix is seamless and efficient, there's no separation of elements or loss of detail, etc. Everything sounds fucking great, I love it. The layout's somewhat bland in my opinion, however. It's basically all black and white with some faded blue tones on occasion, and 90% of the booklet is just text. There's one tiny band photo, and there are a couple of images of a dim light shining over an empty chair, but that's it. I think it would look entirely better were the images of the light and the chair far larger and more central to the background, but whatever. At least they included the lyrics and such information, so it's not completely plain. As expected the lyrics are bleak and somewhat cryptic, and for the most part I enjoy them. "Knowing what I should've known, I'm staring at the telephone, And I think our god has been and gone, But I'm still waiting... I've a solution, a final solution." This is another great record from Antimatter. I don't like it as much as "Saviour" for several reasons, those reasons being predominantly: 1. I like the female singing a lot better than Moss', even though his voice is great, and I'd rather hear more of the female vocals, and 2. I find the songs to be a bit less memorable and somewhat tiresome, so the record, while darker and perhaps more emotional, isn't as exciting a listen overall. Certainly I don't find the catchiness that some of their earlier tracks possessed to be absolutely necessary, but I absolutely miss those aspects here (granted "Everything You Know is Wrong" does come very close). But nonetheless, this is another good record for fans of the chilled out spectrum. It just doesn't make me want to listen to it over and over again like their debut did. (7/10)
Running time - 49:47, Tracks: 8
[Notable tracks: Everything You Know is Wrong, The Art of a Soft Landing, Expire]
The End Records - http://www.theendrecords.com

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