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Zarko · 04-22-2009, 06:22 AM

Zatracenie – Matryoshka (2007)

GENRES – Electronic, Ambient, Post Rock

Sink Into the Sin – 6:32
Slowsnow – 4:39
Evening Gleam Between Cloud – 5:33
Viridian – 5:23
My Funeral Rehearsal – 5:46
Tyrant's Miniature Garden – 7:20
Anesthetic – 4:35
Ezekiel – 5:31
Beyond – 4:20
February Lifesaver – 4:40

From the first listen of ‘Zatracenie’ I heard some eerie similarities to other electronic post rock groups, particularly the likes of World’s End Girlfriend (One of my favourite groups in the genre) and Sigur Ros, however, this album is layered with light otherworldly vocals from the female vocalist known as Calu (Who draws quite the similarity to the Cocteau Twins), with the programming being done by a bloke known as Sen. These similarities aren’t always a bad thing, with enough good songs that make it worth listening to, not to mention the beautiful vocals and composition. The album cover is also quite peculiar, a fine face decaying into the darkness.

‘Sink Into The Sin’ starts off as you would expect many of these electronic post rock/shoe gaze songs would… Some light synth and organ work with some glitching sounds breaking up the melody every now and them. At just over the first minute mark, Calu begins her performance, and we find the aspect that might actually make this album special. She doesn’t push herself to any high pitched level, but instead remains in a low key angelic falsetto level. The backing beat and electronics don’t change much, but they aren’t the main attraction. If anything the whole song is an exploration between the two forces, who don’t always sound like they belong in the same world. One containing hard and fast glitching noises, the other an ethereal voice from above. With about 2 minutes left, most of the aspects disappear, other than a piano for only a few moments before everything joins in once again. This seems almost pointless, and the track would have been happy finishing two minutes earlier.

‘Slowsnow’ is driven by muffled and distorted piano sounds, and it captures a beautiful flash of ambience. Nothing is confronting, the vocals are once again heavenly, and in better form than the previous track, and the electronics are used in conjunction with the other elements here. It reminds me of a particular track in Final Fantasy X, I can’t quite put my finger on it though (Apologies for the flashback

). It’s nothing overly fancy, but it does what the album set out to be, and is probably closer to Sigur Ros than World’s End. ‘Evening Gleam Between Clouds’ begins with the sound of rain striking the pavement road, and the electronics hint at something special. Calu has carried over the form from the last track to produce her best work on the album, it’s quite obvious. Her words are indiscernible, though at times they hint at being Japanese, English and another language at times.

The late electronics of Evening carry to the next song, ‘Viridian’, which is a synth and electronic heavy track. It is a very good change up from the post rock that has been out-standing elsewhere. Calu still performs, but the base of the piece is more hard edged electronic sounds and mixes, as well as some backing keyboard. It still isn’t anything special, but we needed a break from all the fluffy stuff anyway. ‘My Funeral Rehearsal’ is a fairly boring shoe gaze piece. The vocals are nothing spectacular, annoying at times if anything and the duo don’t attempt to push any boundaries with their work, and it is definitely one of the most forgettable tracks on the album. It even has the ripping distorted guitar sound late, which just tells you the track is a bore.

‘Tyran’ts Miniature Garden’ is a slightly more interesting turn, with some screeching string instruments being at the start of the piece, before returning to once again to the post rock sound, however it is a return of a better vocal performance by Calu. It seems a bit lost overall, the elements don’t quite match up (With the drumming being particularly ‘interrupting’ to the overall mood) but it’s still nice. At about two thirds, if you don’t have the player window open, it goes so quiet and the upcoming instrumentation is so bare, that you would swear it had changed songs. This ISN’T a good thing for me personally. I thought the song had changed, but low and behold it hadn’t. This sort of suggests that there is a repetitive boring nature to it. Maybe it was just me though…

‘Anesthetic’ is probably the biggest ‘blending pot’ with a lot of small elements being fairly easy to stop out, whether it is the louder piano than previous, the constant electronic fuzz and sounds emanating from below, the vocals as well as the string section. It’s all gathered into a stream of calmness and tranquility, despite not being a special track for any reason. ‘Ezekiel’ is the fastest track on the album (Still doesn’t mean its fast

), and it isn’t surprising then that most of the work is done behind the computer screen. In my opinion it is easily the most interesting purely because it is different. It has a trip hop sound and vibe to it, even if it might not carry many hip hop style beats. It also becomes fairly deep with noise, and for these reasons I ended up quite liking the track. It’s the change the album needed, even if it doesn’t make much sense.

‘Beyond’ is another chilled, mainly vocal performance that sounds a bit more spacey than anything else, whilst ‘February Lifesaver’ is a nice way to send off the album, offering up some more interesting sampling and a nice tone of finality to the whole thing.

If you couldn’t tell, a lot of this album made me nonchalant. The voice aspects are nice to begin with but on the whole the album just begins to feel same-ish. I hate to use the word considering the stigma Urban put on it, but overall it is simply mediocre. Not because they tried to sound as mainstream as possible or anything, but on a personal level it wasn’t special, it wasn’t bad it was just itself. There are some great tracks but by the end I just found myself trudging through the gunk. With post rock and shoe gaze sounds especially, you need things to sound suspenseful or epic. Everything here is fairly similar in length and structure, and none of the songs really hit that high note after rising from the depths that makes a lot of post rock awesome.

TOTAL SCORE

6.2/10

– Sink Into The Sin

(My net is capped so I won’t be uploading any videos for a few days… I will see how long the compilation takes to upload, but I will only do one)

04-22-2009, 06:22 AM	#63 (permalink)
Zarko Barely Disheveled Zombie Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Australia Posts: 1,196	Zatracenie – Matryoshka (2007) GENRES – Electronic, Ambient, Post Rock Sink Into the Sin – 6:32 Slowsnow – 4:39 Evening Gleam Between Cloud – 5:33 Viridian – 5:23 My Funeral Rehearsal – 5:46 Tyrant's Miniature Garden – 7:20 Anesthetic – 4:35 Ezekiel – 5:31 Beyond – 4:20 February Lifesaver – 4:40 From the first listen of ‘Zatracenie’ I heard some eerie similarities to other electronic post rock groups, particularly the likes of World’s End Girlfriend (One of my favourite groups in the genre) and Sigur Ros, however, this album is layered with light otherworldly vocals from the female vocalist known as Calu (Who draws quite the similarity to the Cocteau Twins), with the programming being done by a bloke known as Sen. These similarities aren’t always a bad thing, with enough good songs that make it worth listening to, not to mention the beautiful vocals and composition. The album cover is also quite peculiar, a fine face decaying into the darkness. ‘Sink Into The Sin’ starts off as you would expect many of these electronic post rock/shoe gaze songs would… Some light synth and organ work with some glitching sounds breaking up the melody every now and them. At just over the first minute mark, Calu begins her performance, and we find the aspect that might actually make this album special. She doesn’t push herself to any high pitched level, but instead remains in a low key angelic falsetto level. The backing beat and electronics don’t change much, but they aren’t the main attraction. If anything the whole song is an exploration between the two forces, who don’t always sound like they belong in the same world. One containing hard and fast glitching noises, the other an ethereal voice from above. With about 2 minutes left, most of the aspects disappear, other than a piano for only a few moments before everything joins in once again. This seems almost pointless, and the track would have been happy finishing two minutes earlier. ‘Slowsnow’ is driven by muffled and distorted piano sounds, and it captures a beautiful flash of ambience. Nothing is confronting, the vocals are once again heavenly, and in better form than the previous track, and the electronics are used in conjunction with the other elements here. It reminds me of a particular track in Final Fantasy X, I can’t quite put my finger on it though (Apologies for the flashback ). It’s nothing overly fancy, but it does what the album set out to be, and is probably closer to Sigur Ros than World’s End. ‘Evening Gleam Between Clouds’ begins with the sound of rain striking the pavement road, and the electronics hint at something special. Calu has carried over the form from the last track to produce her best work on the album, it’s quite obvious. Her words are indiscernible, though at times they hint at being Japanese, English and another language at times. The late electronics of Evening carry to the next song, ‘Viridian’, which is a synth and electronic heavy track. It is a very good change up from the post rock that has been out-standing elsewhere. Calu still performs, but the base of the piece is more hard edged electronic sounds and mixes, as well as some backing keyboard. It still isn’t anything special, but we needed a break from all the fluffy stuff anyway. ‘My Funeral Rehearsal’ is a fairly boring shoe gaze piece. The vocals are nothing spectacular, annoying at times if anything and the duo don’t attempt to push any boundaries with their work, and it is definitely one of the most forgettable tracks on the album. It even has the ripping distorted guitar sound late, which just tells you the track is a bore. ‘Tyran’ts Miniature Garden’ is a slightly more interesting turn, with some screeching string instruments being at the start of the piece, before returning to once again to the post rock sound, however it is a return of a better vocal performance by Calu. It seems a bit lost overall, the elements don’t quite match up (With the drumming being particularly ‘interrupting’ to the overall mood) but it’s still nice. At about two thirds, if you don’t have the player window open, it goes so quiet and the upcoming instrumentation is so bare, that you would swear it had changed songs. This ISN’T a good thing for me personally. I thought the song had changed, but low and behold it hadn’t. This sort of suggests that there is a repetitive boring nature to it. Maybe it was just me though… ‘Anesthetic’ is probably the biggest ‘blending pot’ with a lot of small elements being fairly easy to stop out, whether it is the louder piano than previous, the constant electronic fuzz and sounds emanating from below, the vocals as well as the string section. It’s all gathered into a stream of calmness and tranquility, despite not being a special track for any reason. ‘Ezekiel’ is the fastest track on the album (Still doesn’t mean its fast ), and it isn’t surprising then that most of the work is done behind the computer screen. In my opinion it is easily the most interesting purely because it is different. It has a trip hop sound and vibe to it, even if it might not carry many hip hop style beats. It also becomes fairly deep with noise, and for these reasons I ended up quite liking the track. It’s the change the album needed, even if it doesn’t make much sense. ‘Beyond’ is another chilled, mainly vocal performance that sounds a bit more spacey than anything else, whilst ‘February Lifesaver’ is a nice way to send off the album, offering up some more interesting sampling and a nice tone of finality to the whole thing. If you couldn’t tell, a lot of this album made me nonchalant. The voice aspects are nice to begin with but on the whole the album just begins to feel same-ish. I hate to use the word considering the stigma Urban put on it, but overall it is simply mediocre. Not because they tried to sound as mainstream as possible or anything, but on a personal level it wasn’t special, it wasn’t bad it was just itself. There are some great tracks but by the end I just found myself trudging through the gunk. With post rock and shoe gaze sounds especially, you need things to sound suspenseful or epic. Everything here is fairly similar in length and structure, and none of the songs really hit that high note after rising from the depths that makes a lot of post rock awesome. TOTAL SCORE 6.2/10 – Sink Into The Sin (My net is capped so I won’t be uploading any videos for a few days… I will see how long the compilation takes to upload, but I will only do one) Last edited by Zarko; 04-22-2009 at 08:37 AM.