Released
1998
Label
Old Europa Cafe
Reviewed by
Michael C. Lund
Contact
V.le Marconi 38
33170 Pordenone
Italy
Visit
Last Edit/Update
24 august, 1998
Deca
PHANTOM
Track Listing
1. Extraterrestrial Part I
2. Extraterrestrial Part II
3. Extraterrestrial Part III
4. Extraterrestrial Part IV
5. Vision Of Faith
6. Vision Of Flesh
7. Dreams And Tears
8. Phantoms
For a long time, Old Europa Cafe has been one of Europe's leading
underground cassette labels, with a back catalogue presently numbering more than a hundred
titles by a comprehensive list of the more extreme and experimental artists of the
international electro-noise-industrial scene: Brume, Grey
Wolves, Maeror Tri, Raison
D'Étre, Deutsch Nepal, SSHE
Retina Stimulants, Iugula Thor,
Endura, Runes Order, and the list goes
on. In recent years the label has increasingly turned its attention towards vinyl and CD,
and in these formats too has accumulated impressive lists of releases -- usually made
available in only limited editions, and often presented in very exclusive packaging, the
visual aesthetics of which complement the music of the band or artist in question.
Phantom -- the debut CD from
Italian electronics-project Deca -- is one of Old Europa Cafe's
most recent releases, and it is an excellent excursion into the realm of cold, clinical,
synthetic music -- the like of which has not been heard since Clock DVA's
seminal albums of the late 80s and early 90s. The eight tracks comprising the CD are
compositions of deep, saturated, high-voltage presences; racing and drifting crystalline
themes of an often melancholy character; shrill interstellar signals and crisp electric
interference; vibrating sonic force fields; and, clear, sequenced beats of alternately
chimy, whipping and throbbing qualities. At long intervals a voice emerges from behind
these impressive structures of technologically generated aural atmospheres; its words are
veiled in fabrics of static and electronic effects -- detached and almost dehumanized.
Between the notes of Deca's
music rages the conflict between the human and the artificial. Phantom at once
depicts man's fascination with the machines of his creation, and the simultaneous struggle
to escape their prison. It is this tension that makes Deca's music so
compelling and moving: It masterfully displays the mathematical musical perfection
attainable through the use of synthesizers and computers, while also capturing the brief
glimpses of the ghost in the machine -- the human imagination and creativity that has
given birth to it all, and refuses to be dominated by its own work. The compositions on Phantom
are truly beautiful, but it is an icy beauty of loneliness and melancholy -- one that
depicts human emotions as having become phantoms within a synthetic reality.
