Artist: Tempers
Title: New Meaning
Genre: Alternative / Sangbleu / Post Punk / Synth Pop / Coldwave
Release Date: 1st April 2022
Label: Dais Records
Album Review
TEMPERS come from NYC and they’ve been around for about eight years and they consist of vocalist Jasmine Golestaneh and Eddie Cooper on keys, programming and strings. In that time, they’ve released three albums: ‘Services’ (2015), ‘JunkSpace’ (2018) and ‘Private Life’ (2019), the last one being released on Dais Records, as is the new one, which is really good!
This is interesting. Poppy synth Coldwave that’s dark, layered and textured. Sit in a dark room, it has to be pitch black. Sit on the floor and use your hands to explore the contents of a box. The box contains bricks, pieces of split wood, bathroom tiles and silk material. There’s also dried earth and wet mud along with powdery substances. All of these physical sensations can be heard on the album.
‘Nightwalking’ opens the album and it punches, floaty vocals lift the punch and the guitar shimmers like a helping hand. The vocals on ‘Unfamiliar’ is smokily off key and sung from the back of the palate and then the mouth widens to a dissonant higher tone. ‘Multitudes’ has a bass line that warmly palms across your face and a snappy snare whipping at your heels, the groove being down in the hips. There’s also something subtly DEPECHE MODE like going on in the background. This is a track for the liminal times under a flickering cold light. Distantly warm with a wistful chill is how I describe ‘In And Out Of Hand’. The vocal has a smooth huskiness to it that alternates to an ice like wail. I feel like I’m grabbing for something that is just out of reach, always out of reach…
And then ‘It falls Into Me’ shifts the tone to a skyward gaze. The beat is more staccato and jauntier with layered vocals whereas ‘Secrets And Lies’ shifts down a gear again to a thoughtful level which is hypnotic, the snap of the snare on the 2nd beat. ‘Here Nor There’, the title is a sign of the times we live in. We are between two zeitgeists, not letting go of one and reluctantly or desperately grasping another. The vocal sounds like Anje Huwe to me, kind of whimsically German. ‘Song Behind A Wall’ is hypnotic loveliness, a simple bass threads its way through a miasma of floating sounds as the voice hovers like dust in sunlight. And again, punchy drums and simply emphatic bass commence ‘Carried Away’ that starts in a cold wave vein before pop elements break surface. There’s a pleasing bowed legato string sound in the middle of this track which I like, it’s subtle and fleeting but not out of place.
Final track of this 10-track album is ‘Sightseeing’. This starts with gentle pitter patter percussion that builds in intensity. The vocal shimmies in like a dancer announcing herself to an audience from behind a translucent curtain. This is a rather cold trip hop affair that conjures up reminiscences of the band WHERE THE NIGHT FALLS.
This is a really good album that grows on you the more you listen. It’s cold and warm and darkly ethereal. The mix is near perfect in my opinion, the space between the constituent parts not crushing or crowded which give you the space to feel the textures. There were many times during its playing that I was either playing air drums or interpreting the sounds through the medium of contemporary dance. It most definitely an album for the nocturnal hours where its effect can be appreciated to its fullest. And I can do my gesticulations in the shadows…Ha!
Tracklist
01. Nightwalking
02. Unfamiliar
03. Multitudes
04. In & Out Of Hand
05. It Falls Into You
06. Secrets & Lies
07. Here Nor There
08. Song Behind A Wall
09. Carried away
10. Sightseeing
Line-up
Jasmine Golestaneh – Vocals
Eddie Cooper – Keyboards / Synths / Guitars / Bass
Website
http://www.tempersmusic.com/
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8
Sound: 8
Total: 8 / 10
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