Cathedral of Failure? More like success (Review)

Honest, we’re not doing this on purpose. It just so happens that a lot of sceners that are now releasing awesome electronic music are from Scandinavia. After Sweden (three times!) and Finland, now we give Norway a chance to round out this Northern trifectum. Specifically, the duo Cathedral of Failure, which I previously knew as a drum and bass act, and their album Boarderline. They made this album available completely free of charge, downloadable as a torrent from The Pirate Bay (typical Scandinavian behavior). While the album is a year old, I still think it warrants the attention.

So is the album a Cathedral of Success? Read it after the jump…

The album stretches out over 10 tracks and almost an hour of music. Generally, the album gradually builds up, starting from ambient and smooth grooves and going into drum and bass, before finally sinking back into the ambience that it started with. This is clearly a design by the lads from Norway, and a very clever one. The album really lends itself to looping as a whole and listening to all day, since the tension flows so naturally from one track to the next.

Looking into each track in more detail, the influence of Shpongle is very clear, in both the sound and the groove of the songs, and even in one of the track titles (“Keep on Shponglin'”). Cathedral of Failure makes less use of vocals and real instruments, instead relying more on synths and ambient effects. The quality of the soundscapes set up in “Pancakes & Coffee” is striking, everything sounds incredibly crisp and remains interesting throughout the long track time. This quality continues throughout the following tracks, with nice midtempo grooves covered by echo-y effects and some nice leads. You can tell they know their stuff, with some of the sounds being remiscient of the progressive trance act Infected Mushroom.

From “Terrifying Fungus” on, you get an inkling that this album will not just be the downtempo that has come so far, with some fast licks on the drums and eerie ambient sounds. I really like the way the drums sound in this track, they are very big without just resorting to long reverb times. Although it’s hard to say since the whole album is such a nice whole, I think this is my favorite track.

But “You F’in Foe” and “From the Abyss” really break it down and show off the skills of Stu and Amo at producing some top of the line drum and bass. Here we can hear more of the Squarepusher and Aphex Twin influences, but even in these tracks they stay consistent with the rest of the album.

And in the end, “Basking in the Ambience” provides a nice ten-minute ambient outro to what feels like a journey through different styles of modern instrumental electronic.

If you’re into Shpongle, Aphex Twin, or if you liked the stuff from my previous post about Mikael Fyrek, I have no qualms in recommending grabbing this album. Once again, it’s free! Gotta love sceners…