★★★★☆
Tucking into the essentials of low slung techno, Detroit-born Darling Farah is in the thick of a battle trying to lift himself from a malaise that keeps pulling his debut album beneath the surface. “Realised” is amazingly brisk and skippy considering it’s so sunken, and there’s a dubstep formula detectable on “Fortune,” but again, only if your ears are prepared to go lower than low. Out of a shroud of reverb and chord stammer told it will never see the light of day again, Ryan Reynolds in that wooden coffin of his could have wiled away a lot time listening to Body. Farah shapes the elements like a potter’s wheel in pitch black, swimming towards oxygen-lowering depths to find treasure. Limiting his tools on purpose (word is Farah took only three months to complete this LP having spent time in musically cosseted Dubai), it becomes a skill as to the maximums in atmosphere he achieves.
Of course, the title track and “All Eyes” are argumentatively, archetypical deep techno. Therein lies the album’s entire case. Because Farah’s strait-jacketed himself, or rather gone in with a specifically inscrutable frame of mind, the results can be predictable; or as with the lumpy “Curse” and unforgiving dubstepper “Bruised” abandoning the deft touches for a square kick to the gut, grippingly austere.
File under: Mosca, Emptyset, Joachim Spieth