Iuengliss – Motion In Mind (Bocumast)

Denver, Colorado-based electronic producer Tom Metz’s 2007 debut album as Iuengliss ‘Wake-Up Time’ introduced his delicate blend of glacial IDM programming and wistful synth-pop, and now two years on this follow-up effort ‘Motion In Mind’ sees Metz continuing to forge a path that sits somewhere between Plaid and The Postal Service’s yearning vocals. In many senses, the blend of earnest emotive vocals, jagged broken rhythms and glistening synths conjured on tracks such as ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Dark Motions’ isn’t completely dissimilar to Tim Exile’s recent vocal-heavy ‘Listening Tree’ album, but while Exile digitally chops and contorts his vocals to within an inch of their life, Metz prefers to give his vocals only subtle treatments, allowing their sense of wistful calm to nicely balance out the fractured rhythmic textures below. When it all combines effectively, as on the icily graceful ‘Worth A Million’ and ‘Say Goodbye (Dark Mix)’, easily two of the biggest highlights here, the fusion between the emotional vocals, trailing electronics and sharp-edged breakbeats is certainly a poignant one, recalling at points echoes of Ulrich Schnauss’ synth-shoegazer landscapes. Overall, this is well-crafted IDM-pop that should appeal to fans of the Warp label, though the earnest lyrics do venture towards being a bit twee at points – hopefully, future Iuengliss releases will see Metz branching out a bit from the comparatively restricted stylistic palette of elements in use here as well.