(11.01.05) A collaboration between Robert Andrew Scott and Jacen Kemp, Flatline
Skyline is a strange little flower growing in the noisy wasteland of
Mechanoise Labs’ discography. Known for more sonically challenging
releases (noise, dark beat and experimental ambient), Mechanoise Labs
has scraped back the surface layer of static to allow a little
electro-pop record to bloom. Flatline Skyline is built upon a
foundation of digital noises and synth-pop melodies, but the strange
uniqueness of this release is the presence of Kemp’s vocals.
Sounding like a lab-grown child of Marc Almond and David J, Kemp’s
laconic delivery is straight out of the opium darkness of the late
Romantic poets, a hazy intonation that is filled with disembodied
separation, lending a cold gravitas to the music. The melancholia of
Horizon Grid is darkened by the preternatural ruin of a
broke-down civilization that hisses and crackles in the background.
“Flatline Skyline” warps with static and machine noise while the drum
loops creak beneath the slow sink of Kemp’s vocals. “It’s just
another scar on the atmosphere,” he sings, relating the broken pieces
of the relationship to the noisy detritus of modern machine living.
Massive drums break through the bleak gothic atmosphere of “Riots in
the Bloodstream,” an aural assault that brings with it the shriek of
metallic birds while Kemp intones his funereal lament. “Three Winter
Months” grows from a sea of static, rising up on columns of glittering
tones, and Kemp sighs with the secrets suspended in the fluids of
modern machine age living: “We are your destiny/Your mirror-world
machinery/We are not real, we are what you feel.”
“Bulletproof Bones” chirps and shimmers with molecular life, the echo
of metal plates being rung and the precise percussion of a drum
machine while Scott croons (the single time he takes the lead on
vocals) about the demise of the organic body: “Pipework metal plastic
foam, shatter all things made of bone.” “Tension,” the only
instrumental track on the record, vibrates with sanitarium-style
menance, like a group of escaped prisoners banging on pipes and
working satanic forges deep beneath the surface of the asylum.
Horizon Grid is Romantic mood poetry for the children of the
Machine Age, caustic and razored heartbreak for the boys and girls
with static in their eyes. It’s a departure for Mechanoise Labs and
succeeds wildly because it holds nothing back: Scott and Kemp have
pulled back the metal casements from their hearts and are letting us
see how all the pumps and valves work. Very nice.
Horizon Grid is out now on Mechanoise Labs.
