I’ve been somewhat critical of Department M in the past, essentially for their style dominating their content when it comes to their lives shows. Listening to their debut mini-album, with only the music to engage with, I can’t get annoyed at Brinley’s enormous headphones and mannered stage presence, and it does certainly improve the experience. It would be churlish and unfair to deny the meticulous production, the attention to tone and the layering of the sounds, and sonically, ‘Department M’ is certainly not without merit. In fact, it’s really rather good. But it’s also rather frustrating and feels extremely ‘constructed’, more studied than intuitive and consequently lacking in conviction and soul.
‘pHARMACY’ conjures a rich atmosphere with its sweeping layers of synth underpinned by a throbbing bassline and snare drum that punches through the haze in an expert recreation of the classic 80s sound, and there’s no doubting Brinley’s obsessive focus on detail, no doubt borne of a sincere affection for the era. ‘J-Hop’ has a bleak industrial edge that shares more with Depeche Mode circa ‘84 than A Flock of Seagulls, and ‘The Second Prize’ similarly takes ‘People are People’ as its template with a dominant snare driving things along. That’s cool, I dig Depeche Mode’s early stuff, as do many others, and there’s nothing wrong with passing nods to one’s influences. ‘Miscellany’ broods and bleeps nicely and does deviate from the DM blueprint, featuring a massive industrial clatter instead lifted from Ministry’s ‘Twitch’.
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Owen’s certainly done his research. But that’s where I take issue with Department M: it feels too much like an ersatz reconstruction (time again), and Brinley’s attempts to sound ‘tortured’ or ‘anguished’ simply aren’t convincing: he hasn’t got the gravitas or the solidity to carry it off. In fact, his voice is something of a sticking point: it’s not unpleasant, but is far too light and flimsy to sit with the tone and weight of the music itself – and the music is, in turn, too much about artifice and not enough about art. Yes, it sounds pretty damn great, but the absence of authenticity is a major niggle.
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