This project hails from the UK and the music herein is experimental electronics that's fairly structured and percussive, definitely leaning towards an almost industrial sort of slant, with a lot of dark ambient textures and musical synth elements. It's pretty repetitive material, generally minimal, using lots of loops to varying degrees of success. Some of the calmer, slower beats are pretty cool, but others are more dance-like and ineffective. And the orchestral synths in "Thrash + Grunt" are terrible, sounding less professional and making for one of the worst tracks on the disc - it lacks focus and goes all over the place with no cohesion. Other promising pieces like "A Look at Tomorrow" are also ruined when some bleak atmospheres are torn to shreds by the obnoxious presence of such synth tones, so I sometimes wonder how much thought went into the bulk of this material. The layout is absolutely awful. There are small, small aspects that I can tolerate, but for the most part everything is rather unprofessional. For on thing, the fact that the label's contact information is printed in Comic Sans MS is inexcusable. I'm sorry, that font should never be used for anything, but hey, if you want your type to look like a kids' coloring book, go for it. Inside there is only one set of lyrics included, yet they made space for three horrendously cheesy and unprofessional band photos (including the key band member, "Blip", posing with his cat, Daisy). A lot of space is also wasted since the tracklist is repeated twice, taking up a full panel of the packaging each time. This is a confusing CD. Some of the tracks or snippets are incredibly interesting and well handled, while for the most part the disc lacks flow and feels wasteful of its potential. Silly track titles like "Bug Fucked" also ruin the atmosphere for me, especially compared to a nice track like "Deepwoundsbleedthorns", which sounds like a more musical and basic Godflesh remix or something. A shame. This project could be pretty cool, but I think most of these songs are junk. I don't understand what's going on here, since one song is amazing, a few others have potential, and the rest is a mess.
[Hibou]
Running time - 51:26, Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: Deepwoundsbleedthorns]
Delphium - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/darkplate/
