Just because music technology evolves, it doesn’t mean we stop looking to the past for inspiration. And if that is certainly the case regarding the sounds we make, it is doubly so regarding the stories we choose to tell. “Treachery,” the titular lead single from TATV GRAL’s forthcoming EP, certainly digs deep, drawing in part on Hellenistic mystery and mythos to find a universal, timeless theme, and the title says it all.
And so, we have a case of worlds colliding, one where astrological significance and archetypal forces are driven through today’s landscape, propelled by the mechanical and industrial electronica of a more modern age.
Building a sonic bridge between the post-punk synth pioneers and the cutting edge of the modern world, “Treachery” is a cool (in both senses of the word) pulsing, dance-grooved slice of almost mechanical, man-meets-machine sound. And as forward-thinking as these sounds are, the story is timeless, as prevalent today as it was when people saw it as the influence of Saturn and Mars and everywhere in between then and now, found in such places as Jacobean plays, Jungian psychology, and in Kenneth Anger’s astrologically timed creativity.
The cold, inhuman beats echo krautrock and Kraftwerk, and even Can’s more motorik moods; there is something of Depeche Mode’s transition point, which took them from synth-pop darlings to the dark gods of electronica; and there is no small reference to the darkwave dance underground that links the two.
The music that carries the tale might have moved on, but some stories are timeless, merely because they are an integral part of the human condition.
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