Review Summary: We are the noise.
Few artists have framed the destructive consequences of human depression, as effectively as Austrian cinematic director Michael Haneke did on his debut work, the 1989 psychological thriller “Der Siebente Kontinent” (German for “The Seventh Continent”). Based on a true story, Haneke monitored the seemingly well put life routine of an upper middle class Austrian family, and delivered a critical treaty on how sloth, and absence (or fear, even) of spontaneity in life, eventually slip through the cracks, and corrupt mental and physical health. Oddly enough, the soundtrack consists of two happy ‘80s pop songs, which landed a “best use of music in a film” award, and yet, the bleakness of the plot could be deemed open to alternate sonic interpretations, even 20+ years after the film’s first release. Analogously to TV series emerging from TV series,
All the Way Down of Portland OR electro/industrial project Dead When I Found Her, feels like an excellent, modern-spin-off soundtrack to Haneke’s film.
Compared to its predecessors,
All the Way Down is a different, significantly more elaborate beast. Part of the album (for example, the album highlight “Downpour”) carries on, and enhances the energetic industrial/dance scriptures found on previous affairs; however the metal elements present in the debut, are totally absent here. New material is also based on relatively “calm”, highly atmospheric arrangements; bleeps and loops are orbiting around “lazy” drum machines, and simple, yet memorable synth melodies with a penchant for the subdued part of late ‘80s, horror industrial/synth music. To that end, majestic keyboard-driven walls, as well as careful use of female-vocal operatic samples, grant
All the Way Down the aura of a soundtrack for a mentally stressing motion picture, or the urban moodiness of big cities. As a result, the album’s flow is free of any kind of lows, despite the prolonged temporal length of the last few tracks.
The album wouldn’t worth half the merit it does, if it weren’t for the lyrics, the vocal work, and the to-the-point cinematic samples placed throughout. At the time these lines are written, the author of this review is not sure whether Michael Holloway has seen Haneke’s mentioned film; the lyrics of “Threadbare”, “Gathering Fear” and “Misericordia” however, feel like he watched the former before writing the latter. To that end, the album is commendable merely because excellent art is art that can stand on its own, while hinting to more excellent art, past or present. This is hardly the end of it though, as the lyrics touch the issue of mental satisfaction in fundamentally diverse circumstances.
For example, people who have a problem staying alone for too long are deemed just as restless as people who desperately search for solitude. In general, words in every song feel like they’ve been summoned in a way similar to a surgeon’s “cold blood” decisions about how, where and when to dissect living tissue. On their end, Holloway’s vocals and respective arrangements, are light years ahead compared to the previous two affairs, it’s like he made a conscious decision to push himself more this time around. His whispers, shrieks, and digital filter-processed breathers, are nothing short of indispensable in forging the disturbing, yet thought provoking vibes of the new album.
For his whole body of work, Haneke was atypically dubbed “anatomist of the human soul”. The new Dead When I Found Her album could easily file under the same title, besides being a turning point in the project’s artistic crusade, namely the revitalization of ‘80s horror/industrial. On par with our world’s perennial converge towards universal equilibrium (or the complete lack thereof), Holloway appears to asymptotically approach his own, delivering better and better works in the process.
