The Answer Is In The Beat

Thee Koukouvaya: This Is The Mythology Of Modern Death (Saint Marie Records, 2015)

May 22, 2016 at 5:00 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Usually Saint Marie Records is a home for dream pop and shoegaze, but this is entirely different. Shapeshifting electronic music which is ambient and reflective one moment, then hypnotic and dancey the next. “The Magnetic State” is calm and mysterious, with a gorgeous sunset of synth pads and softly tapping beats, but the electronics simmer and almost overheat by the end. “Anacaona” gets us firmly in n5MD-type melodic, atmospheric IDM, with mutating glitch beats and big, stratospheric melodies. “Chicago Warehouse Party 1995” is exactly what its title implies, with a big stomping beat, although it might be too melodic and the bass is too wub-wubby for 1995. “Drunk Machine” is a shimmering, dubby halftime stumble. After the brief factory scan of “40.207958 74.041691”, “Phantoms In The Last Age” is another slow, somewhat dubstep-ish track with all sorts of eerie screeching in the background, and even a few dolphin-like sounds popping up from the surf. “Prismatic Sun” is one of a few songs on here to bury some vocals in the fog, but it works really effectively here. “A Life In A Portolan Chart” is another drifting afternoon daydream landscape with strong yet calmply placed beats, and then more mysterious vocals (possibly in Greek?) as the songs lulls to a close. The whole album is really nice, I wasn’t expecting it to sound the way it does so it surprised me.