It has been 22 years since then and it is worth noting that the artist’s new album Batteries Not Included is rather dark in its sound, there is some kind of sonic conundrum going on, a certain brain-filtering while listening to the opening track FourtyFour. The character of the music is very nerd-like and somewhat aggravating for the listener, yet after a while you realize that this is a very subtle intellectual formula-based approach to sound.
Visually, the release can be perceived as a unified multicolored viscous mass. The track Among The Monsters in particular can be noted for its voice-based experiments in the final part of the composition. It is pleasant to see a seamless audio picture, performed in one musical direction. The track Eclectric happened to immediately make me think of the Jega project and his release Geometry and I think it’s entirely justified.
In the composition Let’s Communion there is a rather untypical of the previous tracks drum’n’bass-like rhythm section that slightly animates the overall sound.
In the album’s title track Batteries Not Included a viscous IDM-structure is accompanied by a romantic nostalgic background synth-scape.
In Living Hardware we get to see a drum’n’bass-like (or even drill’n’bass-like) rhythm-section yet again, although it is rather modest in the sense that it doesn’t reach its due level of aggression even though it probably should: you are expecting a real audio storm but Shawn is being quite cautious.
The album Batteries Not Included is a sharp little needle that pierces the braindance stack of hay in a most peculiar fashion.
