Having recently get my ears round a compilation that supposedly represented ‘the sound of Russia today’, I’d been anticipating something pleasant and palatable from The frozen Orchestra. The most pleasant part of this album was discovering it’s got a lot more edge than the comparatively safe stuff on the compilation.
From a gentle, melodic shoegazey-indie sound constructed around softly chiming guitars and softly harmonious female vocals, ‘PingPongGirl’ suddenly explodes out of nowhere into a grainy wall of noise. Depeche Mode-y electro collides with searing guitars on ‘Russian Slurs’, and the folktronica of ‘Rollow’ manages to be both brittle and bold. It’s all about the texture and there’s real depth to the production. Delay-drenched trip-hop beats surface in the breaks and there’s a dreamy sheen that floats like a chiffon veil across ‘Overjoyed’. The quietly introspective acoustic reflections of ‘Never Ending Fall’ are rent with a swirl of tremolo treble and nostalgia-evoking brass. Elsewhere, ‘Games’, one of the album’s shorter tracks, brings an unexpected groove, but it’s no funk workout, the loose-limbed bounce tempered by a simmering tension that finds its release in the song’s urgent climax.
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At times reminiscent of ‘With Teeth’ era Nine Inch Nails and at other evoking the spirit of Curve, The frozen Orchestra prove themselves to be stylistically diverse yet coherent, and ‘Freak Control’ makes for some good listening.
The Frozen Orchestra Online
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