Veröffentlicht
Feb 24, 2015Veröffentlicht
February 2015
- A typical L'estasi Dell'oro song is a bruising encounter, and one in which the listener isn't necessarily the one that comes off worse. Christopher Ernst's techno tracks sound damaged, groaning with signal noise, broiled synths and scraped metal. The effect is a strangely hypnotic sort of anxiety—a feeling that persists on the New Yorker's debut album as L'estasi Dell'oro, I Look Upon Nature While I Live In A Steel City.
The album's first track, "Premeditating The First Gate," begins with harsh hi-hats and concussive war drums, but as these elements slow down and ebb away, it begins to hum with glassy ambient voices, the drumming reduced to a fading heartbeat. Ragged edges and discoloured surfaces are intrinsic to the album's character, but its most engaging moments come when its more forgiving side wins out. "Kingdom Of North America, Citizen's Archival Recording #024" begins with soft, pedal-distorted guitar notes that nudge their way into an airy ambient space with a gloomy spoken word vocal. Drums come in now and then, but never quite puncture the atmosphere. "Wavefront", which sits at the album's centre, is the most moderate of these droney techno trips, with thrumming skin percussion and another spoken word passage—a balm to the record's rough textures—on top of synths that howl like wolves in the wind.
At its most unyielding, however, I Look Upon Nature While I Live In A Steel City is simply too inflexible in its approach. When the album really goes for it—as is it does on "Bit Back Straight Spine" and "A Much Updated Ruin From A Much Outdated Style"—the drum programming can be stubbornly thin and monotonous. This matters less on a 20-minute EP, but an album's worth of it gets dreary. Parts of this record are beautiful, but uncovering those moments takes time, and the reward doesn't always justify the effort.
Tracklist01. Premeditating The First Gate
02. Neue Bahnen
03. I Know I Know
04. Wavefront
05. Kingdom Of North America, Citizen's Archival Recording #024
06. Bit Back Straight Spine
07. Did It Good
08. A Much Updated Ruin From A Much Outdated Style