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Palindrones – Chapter One: With Fearful Velocity

By RingMaster Review on May 24, 2023 • ( 0 )

Taking the senses on a journey as intriguing and enriching as the realms it offers the imagination to explore, Chapter One: With Fearful Velocity is the new album from UK electronic duo PALINDRONES. It is a release weaving soundscapes which just draw the listener in and surrounds them with atmospheric and suggestive possibilities yet also presents ears with the simplest pleasure of enlivening sound.

London based, and consisting of multi-instrumentalists Karen and Jamie, PALINDRONES have earned a potent place within the Capital’s electronic and industrial scene and its live presence and now are also beginning to lure keen attention further afield. With Fearful Velocity is sure to stoke that fire with its seven tracks of immersive landscapes, atmospheric electronics and ethereally spun vocals. It offers a haunting engagement yet at times one with electro rock prowess within its evocative ambiences, a union which just steered an involvement of body as keen as that of the imagination the album persistently ignited.

Part one of a two-part concept album, With Fearful Velocity is “a “first contact” story, detailing humankind’s reaction to the discovery and visitation of extra-terrestrial life.” Films such as A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Arrival, Annihilation, The Expanse and Interstellar have inspired its theme and explorations which starts off with Escape Velocity. With an electronic dawning, the track rises like a newly discovered horizon or world, the excitement of its emergence courted by rhythmic skittishness which fuels a burst of excitement around which melodic and suggestive wonder wraps itself.

Its captivating invitation into the atmosphere and adventure of the release is quickly followed by the trance and ambience spun Coma Berenices (Chapter One Mix) where again the senses and anticipation loaded thoughts are welcomed to a new emerging discovery. Karen’s engaging tones and emotively bred words soon radiate from within the pulsations and cosmic glow of the piece, all the while the duo setting a palette of possibilities for the imagination to create with.

Samples additionally add to the drama and intimacy of the album and its individual parts, Anima (Chapter One Mix) embracing the reassurance of one such element with intrigue and dilemma aligning sounds, their fascination centred by the Karen’s celestial breath while Leviathan floats up around its own sampled contemplation with intimate keys and evocative ambience. An essence of loneliness, of space and in life, sweeps the track and thoughts as it gently but firmly immerses the senses, the enormity of such anxiety looming large and fascinatingly.

There is a cathartic essence to the album too, a rich spark to embrace and as within the smouldering beauty and growing fascination of Lemuria often with a low key but provocative touch; close your eyes and sink into any track and you will understand the haunting enlivening prowess at work which again is as potent but with a physically livelier force within the techno infused Samadhi. It is a track which commands and manipulates the body with the siren tones of Karen pulling participation further in, its orchestral-esque winds and melodic weaves no less a temptation.

The album closes with Sakura, a piece of music in one way casting the cinematic wonder and beauty of a new world or discovery with all its secrets and emotional fears but equally a track fusing a richness of electronic styles and adventurous composing with vocal melancholy around lyrically explored shadows suggesting a more intimate anguish and exploration within that broader possibility. The track is further and final evidence of the palette of suggestiveness PALINDRONES offer for the imagination’s to interpret alongside the band’s own intimation and vision.

Chapter One: With Fearful Velocity is a compelling encounter which reveals and sparks more within itself and the listener by the play, and a collection of tracks proving more and more enjoyable with each of those outings.

Chapter One: With Fearful Velocity is out now via LANIAKEA RECORDS; available digitally and on CD and USB Flash Drive @ https://palindronesofficial.bandcamp.com/