Review Summary: Ruining a record 101; featuring Uneven Structure.
You might think a record is the best it could have been when a band worked on it for six years. With a band like Uneven Structure, this isn’t the case… While musically
La Partition is a step up from
Februus, the production suffered majorly. Someone should stop these self-producing bands from touching their plugins ever again. I’m sure this record would have sounded a million times better with just some volume and panning adjustments. Every instrument is very muffled, but the drums are severely overproduced. It sounds like it was recorded on an electric drumkit, but they forgot to plug it in and just went with the ‘acoustic’ result, and then slapped every plugin on it that was available in their Axe-FX library. You’d think that after improving on production with the re-release of
8, which sound was a major step up from
Februus’, Uneven Structure finally realized how to make a record sound decent. Sadly, they didn’t care to put this knowledge to use on
La Partition.
This is a real shame, since this record is really interesting musically. Uneven Structure perfected their type of djent even more, making it more distinguishable from their counterparts. Dropping the generic delayed guitars from
Februus and using more organic tones helped a ton. Fusing the ambient and djent so well makes this record very cohesive, whereas on their debut there was a clear difference between ambient and djent parts. There are also a lot of layers present on this record, like the percussion in the breakdown of ‘Funambule’, just before the three minute mark. This attention to detail is very well done, giving it an edge over past records.
While the way they executed their ambient djent is great, it isn’t very engaging. Most of this record is pretty slow and doesn’t offer a lot of energy. The uninteresting, long-winded vocal lines don’t help, and the muffled production makes this even more of a problem. Even though there are lots of layers, the muddy production stops them from creating massive, captivating atmospheres, making this record lose some steam during its runtime… Well, that’s the case until ‘Your Scent’ hits in. It almost has a death metal vibe, filled with blast beats and dissonant instrumentation. It is the perfect way to end this record, but this type of energy was needed a lot more in this record. You just drift your way through this record, having a hard time remembering what you just heard.
All things considered, this record isn’t as bad as this review might make you think it is. All the layers kept me interested everytime I listened to it, and the few highlights this record had shined a lot more due to the absence of peaks on this album. Using a V-shaped EQ also helped a lot to get rid of the muddiness. Let’s hope Uneven Structure improves their prodution and blows us away with a classic ambidjent record in 2023…
