Review Summary: True to its title, this is a solid collection of songs that lead nowhere, but may point towards the future.
Easily one of the most enigmatic producers in the underground electronic scene these days is Lorn. Interviews are hard to come by, Youtube tracks are sparse and his criminally underpublicised releases bolster his mysterious persona to almost mythical proportions.
Lorn has never been one to shy away from the darkness in his music. However, where as his previous release, Ask the Dust was bleak and mechanical in it's struggle with its demons, The Maze to Nowhere is melodic, fuzzy and at times even warm. If you've listened to Lorn's previous releases, 'warm' is generally not a word associated with his tunes. Whereas his previous effort worked with the bleakness of empty space, we find him filling in those cracks on this album with static, fuzz and ambient effects. The resulting product is a much more organic sounding beast, and man, does it sound great.
This EP contains some of Lorn's most experimental and accessible material to date, and some of his best tracks. 'Oxbow B' is one of the strongest examples. It's minor-key melodic ramblings feels like the audio equivalent of a hypnotist's pendulum swinging back and forth, guiding you to places unknown. Somewhere menacing, somewhere enticing.
'Batty's Theme' is by and away the most upbeat song on the record with its fleeting melodies, steady beat and pillowy low-end rhythms. Abstract and yet concrete, concentrated and aloof. It showcases an artist finding his stride. An artist fleshing out his sound, and pushing himself in every direction at once in a calculated and deliberate manner.
But, just in case anyone gets the idea that Lorn has gone soft, 'All Corrupt Everything' is there to blow that thought out of the water. With it's surging tsunamis of bass comes the unsettled and anxiety ridden urgency that Lorn has showcased in his previous works. Simple, brutal and nerve-wrecking, it ends out this half of The Maze to Nowhere.
What's disappointment about this release is it's length. It is an EP granted, but one ends up wondering, with only eight songs between the two parts, why was it necessary to split them up? Even combined, these songs still only account for under a half hours worth of music. One of the things that made Ask the Dust such a fantastic album was its playtime. It forced the listener to undergo a trans formative experience, drug the you through the mire and muck, but at the end released you feeling cleansed. While this EP shoots for a generally mellower listen, it's no less dynamic, and even perhaps more experimental. It's hard to dog on an EP for its length. Still, I feel that if these EPs had been combined and orchestrated with a bit more direction, it could have been truly phenomenal.
Take this for what it is: A great collection of songs from one of underground electronics’s best and brightest. If it's any indicator of the direction Lorn will be taking in the future, we can expect great things. If he can capture and truly harness this emerging sound, his next album will be a monster.
