Netherlands-based dark electronic producer Eelco Jellema apparently first attracted the attention of the Chicago-based Tympanik Audio label last year with his demo, and this debut full-length album ‘Nothing Lasts’ represents his first officially released material, in the wake of his recent appearance on Tympanik’s ‘Emerging Organisms 3’ compilation. As the piano-centric painted sleeve art hints, the 16 tracks gathered together here see Jellema crafting a sweeping fusion of classical instrumentation and dark, broken electronics that frequently calls to mind some particularly brooding European film score. Indeed, in the case of tracks such as orchestration-strewn opener ‘Hic Finis Fandi’ and ‘Vixerunt’, it’s clear, relatively untreated piano movements that form the thematic centrepiece of the compositions, with echoing, doomy percussion and brooding minor key strings counterpointing the distant sense of imminent violence with a touch of gentle elegance.
While the main focus here tends to fall upon icy, elegiac beauty, when the harsh electronics do break through to the surface, the contrast makes it distinctly more frightening, indicating that Jellema’s certainly got fangs lurking beneath his elegant compositions. The downright harrowing ‘Born With Bruises’ sees treated samples of an infant crying slowly being pushed down into a nightmarish morass of pulsing sub-breakcore rhythms and vast synthetic orchestration, while the serrated ‘Deceitful Snares’ sees distant tolling church bells and looming synth pads being dragged through a mass of hammering, distorted rhythms that calls to mind one of Detritus or Access To Arasaka’s more drilling and atonal moments. While ‘Nothing Lasts’ certainly sees Jellema employing a meticulous approach to both production and composition throughout the 16 tracks assembled here, it’s perhaps the sense of almost unrelenting darkness that makes this album hard to get into – and running at just over 67 minutes, there’s the occasional feeling that things could have been cut back slightly. Still, fans of dark, uncompromising stuff should find plenty to admire here.
Chris Downton
