Shifting from a solo project for Jerome Deuson into a full band effort for this release,
aMute creates an enjoyable enough if not completely remarkable collection of shadowy, contemplative songs on
Infernal Heights for a Drama. The band's ace in the hole is its outgrowth from Deuson's electronic background; like many acts with similar roots, it allows Deuson to create songs that embrace a more fragmented, "inorganic" flow rather than continually paying homage to rock-as-such. The opening "Break," with its stuttered piano loop, buried lead vocal, and slow rise to the point where the beats appear, and the clipped, circular conclusion of "Enclosed Movements/Inner You," at once a trippy swirl and a tight funk groove, showcase this ability at the band's best. Meantime, bursts of glitch and crumble upset the concluding track, "Eyelash: Fukt," ending things on a questioning and unsettled note. That said, this kind of approach doesn't always come to the fore, and the end result can be songs that find the kind of sonic place any number of groups have done in the ten years since, say,
The Soft Bulletin and Come on Die Young helped codify the Dave Fridmann template -- big drum rumbles, tender orchestrations, crushing melancholia in a widescreen sense -- "Begone" might as well be a full-on tribute to
Mogwai, at least circa Rock Action, while "No Other Man," if a more enjoyable number, also suffers from a sense of too-close familiarity). ~ Ned Raggett