Mutinies - OUTLIKEALIGHT - SD-122

Engaging heat outside, tamed chaos on the ears. Just in time for the start of summer, Spheredelic delivers just the right soundtrack for heated summer nights: technoid synthpop dystopias that seem like the pop-cultural reference to times still long ahead.

Let's imagine the following situation: Our flying vehicle shoots in jagged curves through never-ending rows of mirrored urban canyons, past skyscraper-sized hologram billboards that illuminate the nocturnal fog in hundreds and hundreds of neon hues. Everything flickers in visionary colour, whizzing by with ecstatic speed. From the radio, versatile, technoid drum rhythms push indispensably forward, while an ethereally humming female voice unloads in front of dystopian, sometimes echoing, sometimes crackling-clear synthesiser surfaces and melodies. Perhaps this is how the eclectic mix of styles on Mutinies new album OUT LIKE A LIGHT can be described, which was continuously designed, discarded, changed and finally woven together into a rather stringent body of work over the course of several studio and live sessions over the past six months. The duo from the german city Kiel, consisting of Timo (music production) and Sina Konicz (lyrics and vocals), amalgamate a hybrid sound structure with their large arsenal of drum machines and synthesizers that spans elements from Dark/New-Wave to Electro-Pop to experimental Modular Techno - and could deliver exactly what could be playing on the glider radio in cinematic future dystopias like Blade Runner 2049. 

Acoustically, Mutinies rank somewhere between Grimes-like, otherworldly synthpop, Boy Harsher dark-wave gloominess and drum-heavy Egyptian Lover electrofusion. The spectrum of sounds can be strikingly diverse. Sometimes the synthesizers in particular stand out almost string-like orchestrally (FATFF), sometimes IDM-typical, airy synth patterns move in repetitive loops à la Aphex Twin (LEAVE A FIRE) to pounding drums. Above all, the speed and dynamics of most of the songs stand out. But Mutinies sound creations can also be slower, almost drone-like ambient. On EXHALE, for example, a minimalist saw-bass hums to half-time drums and shrill, siren-like synth pads that dissolve into fragmented vocals processed beyond recognition. Which sound in fact is electronically generated or a digitally edited vocal remains open - but it contributes positively to the promising, dystopian visionary depth of the song.

What ultimately seems to unite all the musical nuances on OUT LIKE A LIGHT is the omnipresent use of powerful, compressed, hissing drums and Sina Konicz's voice, breathy in long phrases, which in their combination lay like a structuring fabric over the otherwise rather chaotic screaming, droning and booming of the many synthesizer and sound generator tracks. These anchor points form a kind of loose pop song structure in the otherwise quite heterogeneous productions. And this leading of voice and drums through an almost dystopian-chaotic future architecture with flickering, polyphonic synth voices and booming basses has its own special charm. Let's go, turbines on and take off into the technoid synth-pop dystopia of OUT LIKE A LIGHT.

Mutinies - OUTLIKEALIGHT - SD-122 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.