Artist: AlterRed
Title: Dollstown
Genre: Elektro / Synthpop
Release Date: 4th May 2012
Label: Danse Macabre
Review Flash
ALTERRED… or putting your money where your mouth is…
Although not the easiest, building a pastiche of everything lunatic as a visual identity could become a simple way to cause an impact, however, composing the music to the visual message? That is the challenge and the big triumph of ALTERRED from East London through their second studio album ‘Dollstown’. What could´ve started as just another reworking of influences and styles, ends up in a whole new delirious experience of haunting, inner fears, and like the band has described “love, lust, lunacy and loss” neatly packaged in 10 songs.
With a bombastic eponymous intro track that invites us to “come on freely and on our own will…” and maybe leave some of our happiness behind? Indeed, cause once we have crossed the threshold of our reality we´ll ride a rollercoaster of paranoid atmospheres, drunken beats, sticky choruses that will force our bodies to hit the dance floor through synth pop musts until we disappear in tracks like ‘And We Disappear’ and ‘Rebuild Rewire’. Chased around by our fears ‘Safe’ will makes us feel the opposite and ‘Eve’ will poise us in front of a dark chamber orchestra to answer for our sins… run as far as you want, in the end the ear-worm will stick on your psyche. Cyclical robotic explorations and even more twisted love/ frustration stories are told in ‘A different Face’ and ‘Torn & Tied’ for you to relate with the blue breakdown you keep at bay thanks to music like this to calm you in sad goodbyes…
Conclusion: ‘Dollstown’ is a set of convolutions in melancholy and the liberating nonsense of madness resulting from too much imagery and a whiny voice that reminds us, it is all a game… chasing our ghosts away…
Rating: 8 / 10
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