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.
