Review: Alec Empire - Death Rays

At the first moment, when listening to this release, I thought: "Oh, Alec returns to his roots, experimental and dark ambient in the 90s".
But, oh boy, was I wrong, so wrong.
Technically, yes, maybe, there are some traces of ambient or drone here...
But this release is way beyond technicality, or idle talk about "genres" and "styles". Way past it.
This is no longer about sound or music, as a product that is only to be bought or sold, or a theory that gets analyzed, by academics far above in their not-so-ivory tower, or those that pretend to be like that...
Not at all.

This is more about emotion, a feeling, or an intuition, or concept, a state of mind, or a state of nothingness...
words fail me to describe it, as I am carried away by the sound waves and drown in them only to be reborn in a dark and cold place.
Like the antithesis to utopian Atlantis, lost in the sea, lost in the current, lost in the flow... beyond time, beyond the void... my mind gets carried away, sucked in by an invisible grip.

It's like a dark premonition of a dystopia to come, like a fore-feeling of irredeemable demise.

It makes me think of similar traces in the movies... like when Joseph Cooper steers his spacecraft into the black hole in Interstellar... when Rita and Betty finally turn the blue key (Mulholland Drive)... when Zed realizes that Eric's plan has failed (Killing Zoe)...  or when Jack Torrance finally snaps at the Overlook hotel (The Shining)...

Either way... this is a reign of chaos... turned into audio data. One of the most wonderful releases this year.
And oh so bittersweet.

We love it, Mr. Empire!

https://alecempire.bandcamp.com/album/death-rays