UK-based electronic producer David Dando-Moore’s preceding 2008 album ‘Origin’ saw him moving away from the IDM-based landscapes of his earlier work, towards a more guitar-based fusion of industrial rock and drum and bass influences – a stylistic progression that continues to develop further on this fourth album for Ad Noiseam ‘Things Gone Wrong.’ Opening track ‘Left Behind’ certainly carries strong traces of Dando-Moore’s beginnings in the now defunct doom metal band Eterne, opening with an eerie blend of trailing, minor-key piano notes and broken hiphop rhythms, before the sort of chunky overdriven guitar riffage you might associate with White Zombie or Rammstein locks in around the brittle electronics, sending the entire track thundering off into a flameout of powerchord-fuelled noise. By comparison, ‘Archipelago’ (co-written with fellow Ad Noiseam producer Mothboy) wanders closer to the sorts of brooding industrial hiphop landscapes explored by Nine Inch Nails on their ‘Year Zero’ album, as crunching distorted headnod beats punctuate the space between eerie, funereal-sounding synth arrangements and ascending guitar chords, the latter of which manage to inject a underlying sense of optimistic hopefulness amidst the darkness.
It’s certainly not just industrial-edged aggression that’s on the menu here, however. The comparatively placid ‘Things Gone Wrong’ sees shimmering organ tones, twinkling electronics and distantly chugging guitar chords nicely counterbalancing the ferociously contorted junglist breakbeats that power beneath by imbuing the entire track with a sense of streamlined glide, while ‘Fields Of Dead Leaves’, perhaps this album’s most delicate and introspective offering, sees things being pared back to just piano and swelling synthesised strings as the distant wash of field recorded samples trails beneath, the occasional just out of earshot voice murmuring away at the very edges of the mix. While ‘Things Gone Wrong’ incorporates discernible elements from all three of Dando-Moore’s albums as Detritus to date, it’s with this latest collection that the balance of more aggressive, industrial rock-edged influences and more delicate electronic landscapes feels at its most developed and convincing. Toss in two excellent remixes by the aforementioned Mothboy and Niveau Zero, and you have an excellent album that’s definitely worth investigation.
Chris Downton
