The one and only DEADLIFE has returned in spectacular fashion, releasing his fourth and perhaps most experimental darksynth album, “Orphan.”
DEADLIFE’s darksynth banger “Bionic Chrysalis,” was a breakout hit, and many lauded him as a new darksynth producer akin to Perturbator, Dan Terminus, and Gost.
Then, after his second album, his music took an abrupt turn away from the intense, more club driven dark tracks. He turned to more ambient, experimental music with the release of the fantastic and complex “Variations on the Resolve” and now the follow up, a much darker “Orphan.”
“Orphan” is, in short, a remarkable achievement. Often times genre bending experimental albums get overlooked – but trust me, you do not want to miss out on this record. This deft, cohesive combination of ambient, chillwave, darksynth and dreamwave forms a luscious lunatic gestalt that sounds akin to Shlomo’s early albums or the Silent Hill soundtracks of Akira Yamaoka. Stuttering, cantankerous percussion swaddled in beautifully warped synths and the occasional guitar punctuation write a sonic story I haven’t been able to take my ears away from. By ripping apart the genre box he was placed in, DEADLIFE has created perhaps one of the best albums I’ve heard yet this year.
Some thought this was an entire new direction, but DEADLIFE explained via social media that he’s simply going where his creative theme takes him. He said via social post “It’d be easy for me to write identical albums to my darker ones, but I’d be doing it for the wrong reasons. When I’m ready to write darker stuff, I will do.”
So, for those of you that fancy their synth hard and fast, don’t worry – the old DEADLIFE isn’t dead – just beautifully mutating in his chrysalis. In the meantime, don’t miss this evolution.
Top Tracks: “They Rose From The Abyss,” “Letting Go Of Distress,” “Quietly Slipped Away” and “Tainted With One Kiss”
