Alien Gothic - High and Dry (Latenight Weeknight Records)

Everything needs to move on; music certainly has to. That is why evolution is more important than revolution. Less cool, but more vital. As soon as a genre gets stuck in its ways, it builds itself an image problem. It is why when you mention classic rock we think of denim-clad warriors dealing out pomp and pretence. It is why punk music hasn’t aged well. And it is why people’s images of the gothic scene might still be one of the black-clad wannabe cowboys covered in dust and singing about creatures from H.P Lovecraft’s books.

It is upon the latter scene that Alien Gothic cast its creative gaze. Ryan Policky of A Shoreline Dream and Andy Uhrmacher of Genessier have taken it upon themselves to update the genre by taking that pervading Stygian gloom and recasting it in an alien landscape. High and Dry is an album of 17 lurid and lush, masterful and mystical blends of haunted electronica, cavernous resonance, shaded ambience and otherworldly sonics. And, as Ryan admits, “It’s something we knew would destroy the seedy, cobweb-filled dance clubs of the past, bringing forth a new era of goth… alien goth!”

And ironically, the result is something even more gothic than what has gone before. Rather than change the sonic landscape, they seem to have somehow heightened it, widened it, darkened it, deepened it and added additional dimensions that didn’t exist.

Within this new modus operandi, we find dark dance-fuelled electro clashes with “Interpretive”, the cold spaciousness and ethereal cinematics of recent single “In The Night”, the claustrophobic pulse and disembodied voices of “A Drone of Her Celebration” (indeed a title that H.P.Lovecraft if he had composed music rather than wrote books) and the sinister energy of the aptly named “Alien Dance Club”.

I had to check out “The Olde Town”, mainly because much of my social life takes place in a small corner of a modest, west-country railway town that takes the same name. Man, I wish that was the soundtrack to my nights out rather than the constant whine of nineties tribute bands emanating from venues and a succession of ex-punk band singer-songshouters stumbling through their precious three chord repertoire.

But I digress. High and Dry is a much-needed evolutionary step, driving everything forward whilst paying homage to some of the more fringe elements that went into the gothic/darkwave/post-punk formative melting pot. It’s an essential album for the genre and not a frilly pirate shirt, pint of cider and black or pair of New Rocks in sight.

Get the album / Bandcamp
Spotify
Apple Music
In The Night
Spotify
Shine The Lights