Album Review: The Advent / ‘Sonic Intervention’ (H-Productions)

★★★★☆

Is seven years too long a gap between albums, regardless of an intervening workload? With a starry history dating back to the ’90s you’re expecting that with The Advent’s now solo pilot Cisco Ferreira, experience will count for everything, but the album format can be a disrespecting saboteur. Introduced by the stinging if rather aimless 8-bit electro passage “Present Voyage” that doesn’t really make sense until it finds an opposing bookend in “Electric Pandemic”, you’re none the wiser as to whether Ferreira’s playing catch up. (Intentionally sounding ancient isn’t big news nowadays.)

Sonic Intervention is mapped out where The Advent hops off his rocket, fights fierily at ground level, then remounts his vessel. The crux of the record is techno thundering along, and wringing jugulars like they’re dishcloths. “Gamora” is murky, wading before it starts grooving to a click-clack of pistons and pulleys, and Ferreira soon gets nose to grindstone to knock out bolshie battlers “Arrival” and the grimly good “Body Count,” grinding away as pulses race as quickly as knots in stomachs are tied until they’re looking to make a herniated exit, with only “Disco Diva” dragging itself from the depths with funky loop action. That electro foreword and finale are still questionable; the meat in the sandwich is the work of a master chef.
File under: Mr G, Cari Lekebusch, Rogue Modelz