Berlin-based Artridge, self-proclaimed purveyors of post-industrial chamber music and imaginary soundtracks, are back with a new full-length CD on German label Interlink. With a four-year gap since their previous album, Artridge have developed a knack for effortless eclecticism and a talent for lush orchestration. This all-instrumental CD takes in elements of krautrock, trip-hop, metal riffing, soundscapes, jazz, gentle breakbeats, and even a touch of the blues, and binds them together with a rich and sometimes intentionally claustrophobic production style. Thankfully not an easy band to categorize, they don’t really resemble the ‘electronica’ they’re sometimes tagged with, but fit more comfortably alongside the likes of Earthmonkey or the Pink Dots/Tear Garden‘s instrumentals.
“Halo” is the most accessible tune here, an upbeat post-rock dreamer which makes good late-night driving music (we checked). But this is a rare diversion for a band more fond of film-score atmospherics, at which they excel. “Milkbar”, “Man in the Middle” and “Jellyfish” all incorporate creepy horrorshow ambience but strike off in radically different directions, while “Charcoal” somehow manages to sounds like a Lynchian spaghetti western.
Although they are far too cryptic a band for political message-mongering, the later tracks of the album take on a vaguely political feel, starting with “Polygraph” and the spy-helicopters conspiriology of “Spec Ops,” and culminating in the frenzied “Dallas Ditchwater,” peppered with warlike Dubya malapropisms and guitar noise. After this, closing track “Worldpool” provides a downtempo return to normality, the musical equivalent of that post-Bush sense of relief.
-Andrew Clegg-
