MP3DB.pro - Cold Cave - Cremations (2009)

*Absolutely mindblowing album of layered, distorted and decimated 80's synthpop meets MBV style sonic devastation - one of the albums of the year!* Occasionally artists crop up that manage to extract tangible yet ambiguous feelings of darkness while somehow pushing musical boundaries without pause for breath. Cold Cave is one of those artists. His 'Cremations' album for Dominic Fernow's Hosptial imprint is a collection of two EPs and one LP released over the last 18 months, traversing the darkest shadows of Synth-Pop, Industrial, psyched Noise, proto-electronics and wall-of-sound shoegaze shot through with an unremittingly sour and hollowed spirit that has connected with us like little else this year. The range of comparable artists runs from MBV to Depeche Mode to Throbbing Gristle to Coil, but of course Cold Cave is far more than the mere sum of its parts and in time has the potential to become more relevant than any of those comparisons might suggest. It is partly this amalgam of influences that makes listening to this record so involving as you attempt to dissect those almost-familiar traces from their source, but after the second or third run through you'll begin to accept that this fella has sucked them up and processed them with a sense of irony and affected humour that's all his own. The beautifully uncomfortable atmosphere of this record is defined by a liberal application of caustic noise applied to everything from glorious synth pop to Italo-NRG and DAF style industrial workouts, causing everything to sound visceral, tainted, shivering and lonely without ever feeling unneccesarily overdone. Tracks like 'Mag Dreams' with sinister Euro-porno soundtracks and accompanying sex noises aren't done for puerile value, rather more for the effect of putting the listener in a voyeurs position, especially with the low-quality recording which sounds like it was made in situ on Cold Cave's mobile. The chilling horror soundtrack organs and theremins of 'Roman Skirts' could be some lost Radiophonic workshop outing if it weren't for the menacing sub-bass hum and saturated top end crackle, while the scoured electro-pop of 'Gates' makes Alec Empire sound almost overzealous in it's stoically camp but darkside delivery. There's enough here to put you in a very deep and paranoid coma, and we'd definitely recommend listening to it loud and on an empty stomach while slightly high for the optimal cold and hollow feeling. For all darkside fiends, we promise you, this is a record you will come back to again and again, make the investment now before you get too depressed to even turn your computer on. One of the albums of the year - Immense.