★★★★☆
Achieving immersion through a meager five tracks and 34 minutes, Babe, Terror develops a messiah complex in the space of a lunchbreak. A sound that lies back and watches the clouds dance their own dance, Claudio Szynkier’s IDM, partly celestial, partly the result of a splintered subconscious that should be analysed by clipboard holders in white coats, buries ambient house with plenty of emotional tremors dispatched with it.
More than once, the chugging tempo seems to falter momentarily, showing BT really turning the screw on ears. “Lifantastic I” is a clear path to enlightenment constantly clouded, tripped up and scuffed with self doubt. “Savagestic” is plagued with uncertainty from the start but still has hopes of finding salvation as it bids to put sneaking suspicions to one side while keeping one foot in front of the other. “Cleric” is literally a gateway between frying pan and fire, with “Lifantastic II” sounding more optimistic about its prospects despite facing a wall of constant, pitched down chatter and greyscale atmospherics swirling in no given direction. “War” is the brightest, freest of the quintet, though of course worries remain, nagging until a scalpel is probing the thought process.
Of course the opportunity would’ve been to double the size of Knights and increase the mental workload with it, but BT leaves listeners wanting more while satisfying with the quick-fix of therapy they’ve received.
File under: Animal Collective, Oberman Knocks, Ital