Owing to their thoroughly captivating tuneage I’ll give this 2-man Austrian team a free pass for abandoning the video-game-style Matrix-vs-Hackers concept approach of their last 3 albums, all full of dark, unresolved skulking and no plotline whatsoever as far as I could tell.
I knew I liked these guys for a reason other than their uncanny ability to wetwork trance to futurepop, and come to find out they’re old Commodore 64 hackers who wrote PC games and music in Assembly and – holy crap – hex code back inna daze. Being that this LP is at times a loose homage to the C-64, the beats are slower and a tad cheesier than those of their last few tries, but the overall blueprint maintains the VNV Nation-like approach of meandering instrumentals surrounding an archipelago of stellar hooks, like Eiffel 65 all growed up.
It’s stuff you’d expect will be powering Euro clubs of the future, mature, soaring lines with hormonal-yearning fist-in-the-air melodies, aurally compact but bearing an irresistible vision of someone’s – maybe just my own, sure, but whatever – vision of club Nirvana.
By Eric Saeger
Homepage: Mind.In.A.Box
Homepage: Metropolis Records