Monokle: Rings (Ki Records, 2015)

September 5, 2015 at 5:38 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Monokle: Rings

Second album from a Russian electronic artist. Less Warp-ish and less James Blake-y than his first album. A few songs have full vocals, and others have manipulated vocal textures, without necessarily having lyrics or song structures. Plenty of acoustic instruments incorporated, sampled, etc. “Rouse” is an atmospheric intro track with an upfront plucked melody and fluttery sonics. “Calypt” is a slow thumping track with depressed sounding vocals and live drums along with the 4/4 thump. “Umbriel” picks up the pace and adds some clippy beats and nice melodies, and some chopped up vocal samples used as musical elements. “Blew” is a dark R&B-ish song which ends up with a thumping, shadowy 4/4 beat. “Backwash” is another shadowy, melodic tech-house track. “Loss” is kind of a crunchy, wobbly downtempo interlude with somewhat explosive, crashing-sounding beats and a constant looped voice that sounds like it’s saying “cone”. “Neon Sign” has a nice crunchy, skippy beat and neat sound design. “Holytin” has a xylophone-ish melody which has a sound that makes you think a download finished or something (you’ll know what I mean when you hear it), and is another decent track with a shuffling, kinda glitchy beat. “Kay” is another short, drifty, clattery, kinda angelic interlude. “Borealis” is another solid, sort of subdued tech-house track. “Radiant Pieces” is a slow, melancholy track with the same vocalist as “Calypt”.

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