Multi-instrumentalist Derrick Stembridge lies behind this synth lover’s dream. Fallto opens with the soundtrack-style instrumental, Without Time, awash with fizzing, orchestral synth lines painting sweeping ambient landscapes – a gorgeous opener for synth addicts.
Stembridge’s influences are fairly obvious, the title track lives and breathes Apex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, although the vocoded vocals – used often throughout the album, place the track within a more traditional, song-based format. However, the other half of Stembridge is unmistakeably provoked by the EBM genre, Unknown Divide surprises for its aggressive percussion and doom-laden synth pads, which verge on industrial-sounding at times, but seem a little out of place in the overall context of the album, even if Fallto switches between reverb-lashed ethereal landscapes and clubby EBM almost continuously.
Chameleon, with its incomprehensible vocoded vocals gliding ruefully over melodic keyboards, jagged mechanical pulses and toughened beats, again leans strongly towards the old-fashioned EBM genre. Two remixes of the track are provided, by Drev and 3l3tronic’s more contemporary IDM remix.
Personally, I find this Drifting In Silence project more consumable when it swings towards the ambient/IDM side, then you can sit back and dissect Stembridge’s complex arrangement of multiple synthesiser passages. The anthemic Closure is perhaps the best proof that a full-on ambient/ethereal album would have been more palatable than Fallto’s gregarious mixture of styles. When Stembridge chooses dense layers and airy soundscapes, Fallto sounds relevant and contemporary, when it leans towards EBM it quickly becomes passé.
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Drifting in Silence is featured in the May 2008 issue of Electronic Musician via the Soundtrack of the Month section. “Unexpected yet complementary timbres come together, melting the boundaries between all genres.”
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Um, wow. I love getting blown away by an album or a band that I’ve never heard of before. It doesn’t happen that much anymore, and with more music being released every year than the year before, the signal-to-noise ratio gets lower and finding awesome bands or albums gets harder. Fallto by Drifting In Silence (aka Derrick Stembridge) makes sorting through the dreck worthwhile, with a sound wavering between industrial (“Chameleon” and its two remixes) epic, cinematic ambient dance (“Pretend,” “Meaning of Life”), and grand cathedrals of sound (“Closure”). Embracing Autechre, Tangerine Dream and lesser bands on the Wax Trax! label (Borghesia or Pankow, maybe?) as influences, Stembridge blends their respective aesthetics together and spits back a stone classic. We’re getting close to the end of the year, and I know this one will be near the top of my list. The only problem with Fallto is that its too short! Cutting the two remixes (which are mostly extraneous, although the “Drev Remix” is a real EBM stomper) at the end, this runs only 40 minutes. And while that’s enough to whet my whistle, I wish there was more. Excellence like this doesn’t come along that often.
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Drifting in Silence strives to make dance music for those who’ve never quite felt comfortable making eye contact with anything other than their footwear. But Nashville’s Derrick Stembridge, who handles everything from fuzzbox to drum machine, creates a vibe more apt for late-night lounging than for dance-floor euphoria. On Fallto, moods shift from meditative to driving and rhythmic, shaping expansive soundscapes that Stembridge litters with slow-burning melodies. Stembridge is at his best when creating would-be scores for films from your favorite deconstructionist (“Meaning of Life”), but things can take a plodding turn when vocal tracks are vocodered into superfluity (“Unknowndivide”). In the end, it doesn’t matter if your eyes are closed, on the floor, or looking up to space, as long as you’re hearing the music.
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