Search - Clockdva :: Sign

Clock DVA's spacious, mature, transcendent finale

The Pitiful Anonymous | the Acres of Skin | 04/21/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Front Line Assembly always embraced a cyberpunk aesthetic... Dwayne Goettel, Cevin Key of Skinny Puppy and Bill Leeb of FLA attempted to create the ultimate cyberpunk album with "Tenebrae Vision" under the Cyberaktif moniker... and yet as good as that music is, Clock DVA remains solidly the best and most convincing cyberpunk music of all.



By the time Clock DVA made "Sign" in 1993, they'd already recorded around 3 albums' worth of what you could call "cyberpunk EBM", combining danceable, sequenced rhythms with buzzing, pulsing, darkly melodic synth lines and complex, thought out sci-fi lyrics that were half sung, half spoken by an expressive, mysterious and prophetic Adi Newton... Quite different from their early material, but equal to it in every way.



At this point the style was perfected, and a little of the clutter was being distilled out too. Songs like the kinetic "Obsession Intensifies" and "Eternity" are classic dance songs along the lines of those found on "Man-Amplified", full of groovy beats, basslines, and countless layers of synth blips and noises, but the dramatic longer cuts, like "Pool of Shades", "Return to Blue", or the closer, "Sign", show a new more ambient, drone based style developing.



There's a pure, melodic peace found in these tracks, as if some closure to the cyberpunk saga illustrated in the last 2 albums is being found. The production is clean, clinical and perfect. What cheesiness existed in some of the "Buried Dreams" songs is gone... here you are drawn totally into their world. It's a world of lo-fi spectral displays and projected light, and not as dark or foreboding as in the past. There's some human warmth, and a dash urban post-punk counterculture soul left over from their days as a rock band. Effects on Adi Newton's voice are always oddly minimal. He always sounds like a human being.



Clock DVA's concepts and lyrics have a depth that most bands couldn't even dream of attaining. They do not simply 'sound cool'... it's obvious, especially if you read the accompanying documents, that considerable research was done in order to write these; the details and vocabulary are truly scientific and informed. Song topics include NASA, stars, the search for extra-terrestrial life...



In conclusion, this album is possibly the best and most consistent album of the "cyberpunk EBM" the second incarnation of Clock DVA made. In the end, it's probably tied with "Man-Amplified". If you need danceable rhythms in your music, that's probably the album to check out. If you're into this sort of thing for the atmosphere and the melody, "Sign" is your album.

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