Round Table Reviews: The Delta Mirror – Machines that Listen
July 27th, 2010 by Forest
We featured The Delta Mirror a couple weeks ago in “Makin’ It,” where I espoused my steadily increasing admiration for the group. Since then, not much has changed on my end. Every single time I drop into Machines that Listen, I find something new to appreciate – or I just appreciate the whole more.
Now, I could listen to myself talk all day (am I still writing?!?) but that might get old for those less dedicated to my verbosity.
Enter Round Table Reviews.
Taking a cue from the name of the site, and the idea that more opinions are better than one, we sent The Delta Mirror’s Machines that Listen out to a few music aficionados and asked them to share their thoughts with us. Check out their reviews after the jump.
While you’re reading, feel free to listen to one of the tracks that received the best feedback, “A Room for Waiting.”
Round Table Reviews
Featuring: Mike, Megan and Will
Mike
“Folksy, downtempo electronica with song titles that could be off a Johnny Cash B-side (“He Was Worse Than The Needle He Gave You”) but are full of glitches, beeps and blips.
The opening track has some 8-bit twinges that made me feel like I was watching the bittersweet epilogue to a Nintendo game. “A Room For Waiting” is a complex, densely layered track that is probably the album’s standout. “Malpractice” starts off as a slow burn, but quickly builds its tempo over bleak lyrics.
The Delta Mirror is exploring some interesting terrain here, but its awfully melancholy. If I wanted to feel like a sad robot, I’d just watch Short Circuit.”
Megan
Unable to make up my mind about which artist(s) The Delta Mirror reminded me of, I’m going to take the easy way out and say that they invoke a lot of different styles, sounding a little like different groups every time I listen to them. There’s a little bit of Sigur Rós, there’s a little bit of The National and it seems as if Craig Gordon and David Bolt can’t quite bring themselves to abandon their hip-hop roots.
I love the way electronically-propelled crescendos creep up on you, and how the entire, swirling darkness feels like something I’d listen to on a brooding walk home at night – which, coming from the-girl-who-loves-sulky-music, is a compliment indeed.
Will
One of the few albums I liked on the first listen, then progressively got bored with soon after. I’m normally a fan of the droning, dense music that accompanies well those who sit and nod to a persistent beat. But I was left waiting for a voice to break into verse on the intro track, “It Was Dark and I Welcome the Calm”, and for distorted guitars to add depth to the sparse electronic beat. I had this expectation of detail throughout the rest of the tracks.
Vocalist often pulls off the Ian Curtis monotone rather well, but the music isn’t stark enough to follow into that territory of minimalist fury, and when there is not such emotion under the surface, the effort floats on too little conviction.
I suppose the adjective sterile describes “Machines That Listen” adequately, especially given the hospital setting. But I felt like something was promised for the open spaces on this release, and I’ll be looking forward to hearing future progressions from the group.
Tags: Machines That Listen, Round Table Review, The Delta Mirror
