Absolution is more of a remix album than a new record, Tulipomania re-work most of the material on their Dreaming Of Sleep album plus three new songs. The reasons behind this are that the tunes inspired Jeff Vandermeer's latest novel Absolution. Tulipomania are still Cheryl Gelover and Tom Murray with Howard Thompson overseeing proceedings.
The album opens with the super catchy You Had To Be There a slice of slightly fraught synth pop from the edges of desire and despair.
And Then has a sense of impending catastrophe, with veiled vocals whispering at you over clattering drums and tonal synths and strings with the odd siren.
Strange brings a dark edge of the paranoia of worrying about the next Strange event to upend your world.
From DC To Daylight take us on a long nighttime drive with a backing that might cause the driver to nod off and enter a dream world.
Something Else anything else to what is happening is what they would prefer, voices whisper from behind walls, can it be helped.
Fades Away is imbued with the sorrows of our times, dark dystopian synths looking around and realizing hope is evaporating.
Never Knew is about an absence of trust, who has your back, will you work your way out of this mess, minimal keyboards like footsteps creeping away.
I've Been Told I'm sure you have, how can you not have heard the warnings, end times are here, how will you navigate through darkened synths walls of bad dreams, do the machines parts still work.
Shines On exudes a little bit of hope, amongst the down hearted wash of synths, that somehow the good will rise and Shine On, like the squelchy bassline overcoming all that's been dragging us down.
Time Will Tell if humanity has a future or not, Tulipomania are dreaming that we do still have a future, dark hued synths plateau, we all wake from our dream state the nightmare didn't become reality.
Then And Only Then has glitchy, sweeping synth washes, playing on your mind, confusion of recent traumatic events makes them question everything around them, trying to replace what's been lost, is a way forward possible.
Blank-Gone It's Gone opaque vocals interject between sweeping strings and clanging cymbal hits, mourning everything that's been lost in recent times.
It's About Time for us to break free from dark goth synths, bringing about that revolution, to bring us out of the dark and into the light once more, allowing everyone to have enough money to live decent lives once again. Can the ruling elites be destroyed, is this the siren call.
The album closes with Do You Remember When songs like this were considered Euro synth weirdness, like they have re-worked a song by Agatha Christie (The Band not the author), they try to remember times that were saner than now.
Find out more at https://tulipomania.bandcamp.com/album/absolution https://www.jeffvandermeer.com/book/absolution https://tulipomania.com/ https://www.facebook.com/TheTulipomania/
