Artist: Motor!k
Title: Motor!k 2
Genre: Post Rock / Electronica / New Wave / Krautrock
Release Date: 25th September 2020
Label: Out Of Line
Album Review
Name-dropping NEU! as an influence might show a love of exclamation marks above any genuine musical similarity, but Belgium’s MOTOR!K do create a sort of trance-like experimental electronic Rock at times firmly rooted in the early seventies. Following on from last year’s well received debut ‘Motor!k’ (clearly headline grabbing titles are not a huge priority here), the follow-up is an instrumental tour de force that benefits from uninterrupted listening. Stick this in your earphones and take a long walk somewhere, you’ll be so glad you did.
Instrumental albums need to be something special as we’re hard-wired to wait for the vocals most of the time. Like taking the alcohol out of beer, your replacement refreshment had better be good. And ‘Tyrants’ is a great opener. It starts off sounding like a cross between an early Casio synth demo and a car commercial, before the drums kick in and the whole thing gets propelled onwards with real urgency and vitality. Changes occur subtly, gradually, as it adds and subtracts layers, all the while retaining that hypnotic beat. You don’t want it to end, it’s that good. ‘Headlights’ continues the journey with a similar pace, before the psychedelic come-down of ‘Memoria’ gives you chance to catch a breath and check out the view. It’s beautiful, man.
Fuzzy guitars and a synth pulse get you moving again on ‘Sundown’, and there’s that feeling that you’re going somewhere unspecified, a slightly disturbing rush from, or into, the unknown. It’s got TANGERINE DREAM’s eighties film soundtrack output written all over it. Think ‘Near Dark’. ‘Ritual’ adds some menacing sound effects and percussion to the throb, throwing in some gothic guitar here and there to complete the overall horror-movie vibe. And things end with the prog-rock stammer of ‘Penta’, dark and dank, it flips and flops about like an injured snake, writhing and spluttering towards a wonderfully sinister end.
This is a well-balanced and structured piece of music, an album that creates an atmosphere and a vision, and doesn’t let go until the very final second. Exhausting at times, but ultimately highly satisfying, a real achievement in a difficult genre.
Tracklist
01. Tyrants
02. Headlights
03. Memoria
04. Sundown
05. Ritual
06. Penta
Line-up
Joeri Dobbeleir – Guitars / Synths
Dirk Ivens – Guitars / FX
Dries D’Hollander – Drums
Website
https://motork.bandcamp.com / https://www.facebook.com/MOTORIKBELGIUM
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8
Sound: 8
Total: 8 / 10
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