5.0 out of 5 stars
Electropop with an experimental edge, January 14, 2008
This review is from: Art of Survival (Audio CD)
The new I, Synthesist album builds on the same electronic and dance roots that Chris Ianuzzi drew on for 2004's Avalanche. (He's been on the scene in NYC since the 1980s, working with electronic pioneers like Man Parrish, Suzanne Ciani, and even Vangelis.) But this time around, he's expanded his vision of expressionist electropop, journeying beyond pure synthesized pleasure into darker and more adventurous territory.
The sonic spectrum is gritty and glitchy; melodies veer suddenly into dissonance, then back into line; voices are reflected, distorted, and multiplied. Strong beats anchor everything (until the expansive ambient piece that concludes the disc). Ianuzzi's vocals resonate throughout with a very human sense of desperation, confusion, and passion.
It's a hard album to sum up in a short review: the sound and feel are constantly changing, from song to song and from moment to moment. To me, it evokes the mixture of uncompromising futurism and real emotion in John Foxx's post-Ultravox solo album Metamatic.
Songs like "Telepathy," "Don't Belong," and "Time Machine" have been getting enthusiastic crowd responses at I, Synthesist live shows (and deservedly so). But my favorite track is probably "Waterfall," an intense blast of feeling that hums in the brain like a fragment of a dream.
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