Illogical (Devour, Rise And Take Flight - Android Lust)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Devour, Rise And Take Flight - Android Lust
Date:	20/01/08 (17 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice vocals, and some interesting electronic touches.

Disadvantages: The best songs steal from Nine Inch Nails, and the worst are just dull.

Bangladeshi electronic composer Shikhee has made some interesting and evocative albums under the Android Lust moniker, but despite being praised by various regions of underground electronic and goth cultures, the level of musicianship itself is fairly mediocre, replicating the style that everyone and his brother can cobble together on a laptop. Fortunately, not all are blessed with such vocal talent.

Shikhee's vocals are what carries this odd and often discordant music through, primarily based in a natural singing voice that gets particular chance to shine in the softer, sparser offerings 'Sense of it All,' 'Unrecognize' and uncharacteristic acoustic-led bonus track, but adapts equally well to the more dynamic and expressive pieces. The opening song seems determined to demonstrate her underground credentials through an overload of crunching, distorted sounds that inspires her singing to move from a subtle whisper to a rasping style that vanishes for the majority of the album, once it becomes content to be a little more accessible from here on. The vocal highlight comes with the dark and honest 'The Body,' which works so well primarily because it steals the best elements of Nine Inch Nails' definitive industrial staple 'The Downward Spiral'; contrasting soft sections with raw acoustic guitar balanced out by louder, more energetic passages and Shikhee's subtle snarl, which will only resurface in 'Fell the Empty Mask,' effectively a call-back to the first song.

There are very few elements of industrial rock outside of the grinding guitar and catchy, clinical drums of these select songs, and the general style is a melancholy take on the electronic underground. The paired 'Thomael' and 'Lingue' represent the peak of the album's eccentric underground oddness, the only songs where vocals are absent, but these more extreme and experimental tendencies are similarly uncharacteristic of the fairly accessible core of the album, which reaches its disappointingly bland peak in the basic dance piece 'Memory Game.' Shikhee has an excellent voice and is perfectly suited to this album's dark tone, but overall there's too great a contrast between the few consciously "alternative" offerings aimed solely at inclusion in the next Hollywood cyberpunk blockbuster, and pleasant but mediocre offerings to bulk it out. The best elements could have made for a fairly strong E.P. release, but the full-length album is pretty stale.

1. Lover Thine
2. Hole Solution
3. Dragonfly
4. Wicked Days
5. The Body
6. Leah
7. Sense of It All
8. Fell the Empty Mask
9. Memory Game
10. Thomael
11. Linguae
12. Unrecognize
13. Bonus Track

Summary: Shikhee's third album as Android Lust (2006).