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Wunderbugg
Written in Flesh

Posted: Friday, October 10, 2008
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

Despite its somewhat bloodily suggestive title, Written in Flesh, the debut album from Wunderbugg actually resonates with expansive ambient energies and deceptively simple yet danceable rhythmic arrangements that will certainly put some listeners in the mind of early '90s IDM and experimental electronica. One need only listen to the cloudy atmospheres and chilly textures of "Infected with Hope" to notice similarities to Autechre's early work, particularly the Amber album, with layers of beacon-like arpeggios and almost Oriental-esque melodies drifting in and out of the mix like specters in a dream. "Unsaid" is another notable track, with a distorted solo that, not unlike many film scores of the '80s, almost mimics a guitar - or perhaps it is a guitar, who can say? - augmented by a simple but slightly off-time series of drum loops and synth backdrops that sound like church bells on Christmas morning, reverberating into an all-encompassing sonic cavalcade. And then you have a track like "Heartworm," in which once again the rhythms take the occasional off-kilter slants while a pensive piano underscores a simple progression of oscillating pads, while "Naked" takes on a bit of an aggressive edge with a hardened drumbeat, searing synth leads that unfortunately sound somewhat preset, though effective all the same, and taken into even more ethereal territory by an almost Mellotron-like chorale. Ending things on a much more trancelike note is "Never Enough Time;" with its succession of wavy synths, progressively minded keyboard solos, and a simple electro beat, it's the kind of track that would please electronic music enthusiasts and the dance crowd alike. While the interplay between Whidden Flores, Nick Evans, and Lorin Antzen creates a lush and icy bedrock of soothing energies, one of the glaring issues some may have with the album is that the sound is almost too big for their precious ears to handle. It's certainly not an indication of bad production or mastering, but rather that the band's sound could do with a little scrutiny so as not to envelop the listener into too frigid an audio landscape. Be that as it may, Wunderbugg does well to merge elements of progressive trance, ambient, and early IDM in such a way that experimental electronica as a whole would do well to pay credence.