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Album:
"A
People Undone" (2000) |
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Reviewed by: Darklight Moksha is the side project of the industrial act Fektion Fekler. However, there aren't any similarities between the two as far as I can tell. But this is a good thing as side projects should be completely different. The songs contained on this CD are a collection of Moksha tracks recorded between 1992-1998. However, everything still manages to sound current. The album opens with the beautiful dark synth-pop song "God I'm Sick". The programming and keyboard melodies on this trck are superb, and the vocals are clean and sing well. This song reminds me of older Depeche Mode material. The problem with this CD is that it doesn't continue in this same direction. Instead, it's flooded with instrumentals. While they're quality, there's just too many of them. When a band has a good singer, I feel that they should utilize them more. This band tends to jump from one style of music to the next too often never allowing them to be placed. I respect variety, but sometimes bands can go too far where their albums mix too many different genres making it difficult for people to enjoy everything that they have to offer. This CD, unfortunately, suffers from too many different styles of music all thrown onto one album making it sound more like a compilation compiled by different bands as opposed to just one particular band. While some people might find this appealing, I personally don't. When I'm in the mood to listen to a certain style of music, I reach for a CD that is going to offer me what I'm in the mood for. However, CDs such as this one switch from one thing to the next so often that I can't consistantly enjoy it from beginning to end. I will admit that Moksha are indeed talented musicians that manage to produce well composed, quality songs. There's really nothing bad here. But the styles switch from dark synth-pop ("God I'm Sick"), to dramatic orchestrated instrumentals ("Miss"), to funk flavored lounge ("You And Me"), to techno ("Consectrated Virgin"), to western acoustic guitar ("The Risk You Take") throughout the course of the CD making it a roller coaster ride of different musical genres that are all difficult to enjoy together. Six songs have vocals and six songs are instrumentals. This is just too much variety for me. However, when all is said and done this is a quality CD with a lot of good songs on it. If you like a lot of variety, this disc has it. Everything does stick to electronic/synth music with the addition of guitar here and there. There's basically a little something here for every electronic music fan. I just hope that the band focuses more on dark synth-pop music with vocals in the future, and less on dramatic instrumentals. |
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