Artcore Machine - LAMINA

Artcore Machine, to say the least, was not very well received on the site the last time they were given a shot in the dark. Reading about them makes me almost a bit shy to take a look at their music. However, I always begin with a blank mind whenever cruising into a new album from an artist I don't relatively know all too well. And, thus far, it's not that bad.

I think that they still don't know what they really want to be, as almost every single one of their songs head into a new direction in comparison to the next one or the previous. It's nice, but it also almost makes a certain mastery of one genre over another useless; they stuff a lot of different material into one album. Where quality and quantity mix, I think they have an edge in quantity.

Coiled Coil starts off the album with a sort of minimal approach, focusing on odd electronic tid bits with throws to glitch effects as a static build towards the end of the song to transition into the next. The second picks up the pace and hits out a sort of power electronics driven song. Not all too great, but not the worst, either.

The third track, Alfa Elica, gives out a nice little electronic beat with few elements of glitch present in the song. Techno-ish in a sense, it was alright in my books. Overload Engine was another song driven by power electronics, slamming straight through to the end with off the wall noise and a harsh rhythm. It was decent. Croma was similar in flavor to this one, and there wasn't much to say about it.

There's an instrumental version of This Isolation, another decent electronic song. Not bad, not great, it lies somewhere in between. Retina Dentata continues where the power electronics left off. It seemed to me as if the previous track served as a bit of a break.

NLS kicks off another quieter electronic track filled with all sorts of odds and ends. Nice little touchy flavors spewed here and there. Testa/Coda was interesting, but had a really awkward part where everything got quiet for a few minutes. Very little noise; this ruined the song for me.

Molecula followed the path of previous electronic, sorta IDM themed songs. But, even then, it was a tad bit too similar to enjoy fully. And, the next song, Genes, just seemed too similar to previous power electronics songs. It was almost like a copy and paste effort. Nuclear Lamina, with less focus on hard bass, at least for the first half, drove out an almost rhythmic noise sound. Still, it was a sort of been there, done that ordeal.

Dark ambient sounds pervaded Heliquod a lot, and it was alright. Nothing too fancy. Killer T didn't do much for me either, and was a bit of a let down.

Now, with this album, my interest faded as I went on. Where at first I was sort of intrigued, the songs just kept on seeming way too similar to even enjoy. Though, i will say that the first few songs were nice, the rest just dragged out the album perhaps just for length's sake. And, that is where the quality suffered. Perhaps fewer songs that are unique in themselves would do the trick rather than not. Jul 04 2014