With eleven pulsating bubbles of electro pop which disperse upon the senses like a warm Technicolor monsoon of liquid aural crystals, Remote Viewing from Low Sea is a scintillating embrace with rewards at every corner of its sultry shadows and dazzling breath. The album from the pair of Bosnian Billie and Liverpudlian Bobby D enchants and mesmerises with a temptation which is blessed by sirens and borne of the most vibrant electronic breath.
The Ireland based duo first met while living in the United States, Billie having fled to San Francisco when the war in Bosnia broke out. Finding a bond the two released a mini album on US-based Lefse Records before working with Dell’Orso Records with the view to creating ‘a narcotic pop album’, something you can say they succeeded in doing with Remote Viewing. A big chunk of the album was recorded and self-produced in a cottage overlooking a light house and harbour in the isolated fishing village on the Irish coast where they live, the other songs mixed by Stephen Hague (Pet Shop Boys, New Order, PIL), including the lead single/title track. With a sound described as “Julee Cruise on sedatives”, the duo has produced an album which washes over the senses like a seductive warm tide rippling with the rays and shine of an eager sun. It is magnetic and hypnotic, occasionally inflicted with a drifting similarity which reduces the fullest potency of some songs, but throughout it is a compelling ambient persuasion to which resistance is a missing ingredient.
Affliction Of Love is the first teasing embrace, its pulsating presence littered with growing radiance and inviting sultriness. Immediately thoughts of the likes of Altered Images, The Mouth Of Ghosts, Propaganda, and Daisy Chainsaw lift above the parapet admittedly as much for the inciting vocals of Billie as the expansive heat of sound. The energetic start makes way for the more reserved but equally as enthralling Sentimental Games. The song entwines intriguingly around the senses, its heart radiating with a golden electro sheen and the deliciously sirenesque vocals wrapping the passions around each and every syllable and emotive charm. The Cellophane Flowers like lilt to the song like the first song brings a slight familiarity to its open distinctiveness, a delightful paradox to immerse within whilst basking in its smouldering kiss.
Across the New Order inspired title track with its wonderful dark prowl within electronic flames, the sensational Starlight, and the equally impressive Cast A Cold Eye, the album brings a growing ardour for its wantonness to bear. The second of the three is a celestial sunrise of instinctive rhythmic energy and angelic harmonies which soaks every atom for immediate obedience whilst the third has the darker edges of early pre-split Human League. Its haunting warmth and niggling underlying taunt is a perfect merger of extremes and sonic devilment as well as another major highlight on the album.
Breathing In Too Fast steps forward with another irresistible stroll; the gnarly resonance of the intense bass sounds a shadow of the most addictive primal stance and again offers an impossibly compulsive fusion of extremes with the melodic electro dew and vocal beauty of Billie eager companions.
Arguably as the closing few songs make their undoubted stunning contributions there is a slight lack of surprise accompanying them, the vocals and synths playing with existing armoury explored on the album but in saying that each track like Alex and the epic touching Last Rain to name two still ignite the passions and appetite for so much more from the band. Remote Viewing is a wonderful album, a release which brings the darkest seductive shadows and evocative ambiences to the most vibrant and mischievous electro dance sunsets.
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8.5/10
RingMaster 08/04/2013
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