Frausen – Wasteland Devastation Love Songs

Frausen - Wasteland Devastation Love Songs

Label: Offshoot
Release date: 2013
Source: CD
Format: MP3
Quality: 320 kbps
Size: 117 mb
Genre: Electronic
Style: IDM, Downtempo, Neo Folk, Nu Jazz

Tracklist:
01. Temple Of The Delphi
02. My Dervish
03. Serpent Between My Thighs
04. Black Clouds
05. Don’t Waste My Time
06. I Am The Lovely
07. Last To Die
08. Love
09. Transmission
10. Odin And His Sorrow
11. Bonus Track The Opera

Frausun is a sonic chameleon. Ever shifting it is hard to get a definite grasp. One moment calm, the next exploding into an almost dance-like shuffle, it is shocking. Instability is the defining feature throughout ‘Wasteland Devastation Love Songs’. Right when the listener is drawn into lull that’s when Frausun strikes breaking up into distortion, shards of the previous melody blasting through. Keeping up with these sudden shifts is downright impossible. However multiple listens of the album start to reveal its many charms. The vocals on the album provide one of the few anchors of the sound itself with the female vocals generally offering the best contrast. Otherwise it is completely free to do nearly whatever it wants.

‘Temple Of The Delphi’ is a good example of what occurs on much of the album: buildups abandoned for the instant shock. On this track particularly the calm of the vocals counterbalanced with the activeness of the electronics makes it particularly intriguing. For ‘Black Clouds’ there’s a particularly perverse humor involved. Akin to Foetus’s approach it merges multiple versions of easy listening into something that’s quite disorienting. ‘Don’t Waste My Time’ continues in this similar vein. However ‘I Am The Lovely’ takes a completely different approach beginning with a full-on assault before breaking down. ‘Transmission’ is perhaps the most fun they have on the album with a perky stomp and interjections of random noises in the background. Actually this may be one of the highlights of the album.

Wasteland Devastation Love Songs is a deeply strange outright confusing album that nonetheless manages to be surprisingly engaging.