The album’s almost cyber-punk and relentlessly austere energy also veers into musical territory inhabited by Ghostly International-signed acts.
Evoking a sense of intrigue and confusion
Derrick Stembridge is an incredibly talented electronic sound producer that creates post-techno realms, slow motion ambient chills, and fuzzing assaultive industrial music. Derrick’s own Labile Records imprint is the publisher of this record. Due to his Drifting in Silence project, whose materials have been reviewed on multiple occasions in these pages, I am mostly familiar with his extensive and varied repertoire of electronic orchestrations.
This solo project features snappy electro grooves, wandering and readily moving melodies, and hyper-tonic, calming, yet engaging ambiences that are all hallmarks of Stembridge’s style. This work possesses the cinematic sci-fi aspect of earlier albums as well. It psychologically transports the listener to remote spaces and robotics that seem oddly foreign, evoking a sense of intrigue and confusion similar to what we find in fiction books by authors like Murray Leinster or Jack Vance. The music has its own unique syncretism, drawing inspiration from electro industrialism (EBM) and space music from the 1980s as well as retro synth wave and space music.
Pop-electro beats, dance-oriented melodies, ethereal synths, and minimalist melodies are the main vocalization styles used in these compositions. Fans of the avant-gardist and addictive post-industrial movement started by Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly, as well as those nostalgic for good analog space and synthedelic materials by Marsk Shreeve and Redshift, will be readily seduced by the hypno-ish beats and electronic machine dynamics. The album’s almost cyber-punk and relentlessly austere energy also veers into musical territory inhabited by Ghostly International-signed acts. A varied and well-organized album that is well worth listening to if you enjoy the previously described musical subgenres.
Past Present Future: Archive I is available on Labile. [Bandcamp | Site]
