Artist: Der Klinke
Title: Gathering Of The Hopes
Genre: Cold Electro / New Wave / Synth
Release Date: 14th November 2014
Label: Echozone
Album Review
With ‘Gathering Of The Hopes’, Belgium's Dark Wave / Electro trophy DER KLINKE has released its third fulltime album, almost two years after its praised successor ‘The Second Sun’. The first listening alone reveals on the one hand the musical influence of the late eighties / early nineties dark Electro timbre with its harsh beats and typically coloured soundscapes (finding even landings on the shores of the Electronic Body Music territories of that time, clearly perceivable in tracks like ‘The Doll’, ‘Cold Water’ and ‘Facts Of Life’) and on the other the fact that the band seems to have roughly outlined their musical vocabulary, trusts mostly in the communication with a familiar language. The above named tracks are all well-done regarding the arrangements and the production and using a quote from their press-sheet: "...inspired by yesterday", you can only confirm the congruence of that statement and your perception, but the quotation goes on with: "...ready for the future" and here the silhouettes start to shift against each other noticeably.
It is enjoyable to feel a certain time resurrect so credible and bluffing authentic but it's just too familiar and replicable, too predictable and pattern-like to point satisfyingly onwards. (Unless history is really a circle, but then I think there's a miscalculation regarding to the radius!). But nevertheless it's good stuff for filling the air above foggy dance-floors, because it has a lot of energy and this cold artificial surface, what makes it so attractive in lightless surroundings. But there are a few songs which elude from this uniform weaving pattern and these are the real highlights on this album in my opinion. There is the minimalist ‘Night Air’ (a cover from the electro-pop artist Jamie Woon), shining with its catching synthetic melodies, embedded in a fragile cage of rhythm and noises for unveiling an almost palpable despair without to raise the fist of sonic pressure. Or the title-track, which feels like a collage of different layers of sensation and sound, dressed in an analogue robe of semitones and twilight.
And finally ‘A Tale From The Crypt’, an instrumental, whose hypnotic marimba-like flickering and factitious strings create a kind of a kaleidoscope setting, like a soundtrack for a colour spectrum, ethereal and interspersed with a certain kind of beauty. Summarizing you can say that ‘Gathering Of The Hopes’ is a brilliant album for those who like this dark electronic vibe of the last millennium, fed by stomping machines and sterile sounds. It contains a lot of energy and atmosphere, mirroring it's artificial lightless on a credible vision, pulsating somewhere deep and down in the synthetic womb.
Tracklist
01. We Are Here
02. The Doll
03. Night Air
04. Cold Water
05. Our Dance In Darkness
06. The Gathering Of Hopes
07. Still Falling
08. The Facts Of Life
09. Follow Me
10. A Tale From The Crypt
11. Feeling Sad (R.I.P)
Line-up
Chesko Geert Vandekerkhof - Composing, DJ, Programming, Vocals
Heidi Van Tiggelen - Keyboards
Marco Varotta - Guitars
Sam Claeys - Bass
Hazy Chris De Neve - Drums, Percussions
Miss Lollirot Deaddol - Vocals
Website
http://www.derklinke.be
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 7
sound: 7
Total: 7 / 10
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