Charlatan - Triangles (Digitalis, 2011)
Charlatan is the moniker adopted by Digitalis label-head Brad Rose to express his most lucid electronic visions. In contrast with his multifarious body of works, he articulates the majestic crests and synthesized shapes of 'Triangles' with far sharper contours and a taste for more piquant dissonance which resonates on the mind like a mild acid. This heightened clarity also renders its emotional impact that much more powerful, lending the whole album an almost quasi-religious atmosphere and intent. This sense of lambent electronic spirituality radiates from the gracefully ascending chords of opener 'Lime Beauty' while a slowly motorik machine beat chugs us deep into the landscape, the dissonant, arpeggiated vortex of 'Faint Blue Outlines' and the sombrely reflective penitence of 'Vodka Rocks'. Turning over, there's the poignant pay-off of 'Traces', casting a spellbinding mesh of skyward synthlines over loping drum pulses, slowly shuffling forward in the queue to be received by the deliciously warped dissonance of 'Foxes', recalling the ambiguous twinges of Leyland Kirby but with the glorious impact of Rose's own Altar Eagle compositions. The final deliverance is Brad's celestially sanguine 'Swimming Pool Summer Nights', a transcendent piece of instrumental ambient pop drinking from the chalice of Talk Talk and Joy Division but augmented by blooming 808 beats which define the record's supernatural sense of space.
mp3-Charlatan-Triangles.zip
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