NEUVISION - The Demon​-​Haunted World

Its a cool, rainy Sunday afternoon here in Brisbane and finally I can leave the real world behind and listen to some new music. What to choose, what to choose? At BR we get an enormous amount of music through the virtual doorway and to be honest, not all of it is, ummmm, good.

Then I see the new album The Demon-Haunted World from Neuvision sitting in my little area of data and code and technological things that make pretty words and pictures appear. Hmmmm, EBM and synthpop the tag reads. Sweet, just the thing for a rainy afternoon. Now perhaps the name Neuvision may not be familiar to you but the name Degeneración Debraye may be? Well if not let me fill you in and introduce you some of the best synthpop/EBM going on and possibly the best of that style out of Mexico.

In 2009 Ricardo Yrgod formed, essentially, what was a solo project Degeneración Debraye and after a bunch of strong releases and festivals, he evolved their style in 2015 and decided to become Neuvision. The Demon-Haunted World is the debut release under this name and is, to be honest, excellent!

This release is thirteen tracks running at just over the sixty-nine minute mark consisting of ten originals and three remixes of 'Body and Symphony' from Nitronoise, Electrovot and Yrgod Droid. According to the press kit (and as a heads up to anyone out there a press kit or as much information you can give about yourself/band when sending in demos/product for review is an enormously great idea) the album is heavily influenced by Carl Sagan and his book of the same name. So lets get into it.

'The Absolut Revolution' starts off the album and is a short intro track with heavy bass strings and vocals building to a pulsing bass and higher strings until we plunge into 'The Night is Ours' which has a deep old school synthpop feel to it with beautiful female vocals interlaced throughout.

A classical string segment brings us bounding into 'Body And Symphony', which is more reminiscent of their earlier incarnation being a little more chaotic as does the following track 'Conciencia Electro'.

Back into the 80's feel synthpop with 'Other Side Of Space', 'We Are Humans' and the slower darker title track 'The Demon Haunted World'. Bouncy bass lines, crisp beats and sequenced noises drift through the songs beautifully in the previous tracks and continue with '4th Dimension'.

'Mexicanos al Grito de Guerra' takes us for one last visit into the EBM part of The Demon-Haunted World with some harsh EBM style vocals while retaining the 80's feel. The 'Body and Symphony' remixes start with Nitronoise's dismembered remix and being a Nitronoise remix it is brilliant, guitar heavy, and a massive kick and bass clean chaos.

'Tokyo 3' is a little track in between the remixes. Not sure why it is here and not in among the original tracks but it's an excellent instrumental track full of big bass and beats. Electrovot's remix of 'Body And Symphony' follows, giving the track a more harsh EBM feel and the album is finished off with Yrgod Droids more EBM/electro version of the same track.

The Demon-Haunted World is a great album. Well put together. The songs flow smoothly after each other and they feel that they are where they should be. You no doubt notice I use the words "bouncy", "pulsing", "crisp", etc. a lot when writing these reviews. To me this is a basic ideal of what synthpop is about: clean beats and basses, crisp beats and noises, as those noises decay and distort we get into the EBM range of ideas and sounds. This album covers both those concepts well.

All but the mastering is done by Ricardo. The mastering is done by X-Fusion. As soon as you read that you can understand the sound of this release and why my oft read descriptions of noises are relevant.

So if you love the modern 80's feel of synthpop and ebm I suggest getting a hold of Neuvision's The Demon-Haunted World and putting it on whatever listening device you have and giving it some high rotation.
Jun 13 2016