The second solo album from Australian producer
Kane Ikin is a quite different proposition than his 2012 debut
Sublunar. Born of a period of financial hardship that saw
Ikin reduced to selling off his gear piece by piece to make ends meet,
Modern Pressure takes the darkness only hinted at in his other work to its logical conclusion. Operating by necessity with a stripped-down setup, seemingly of synths, drum machine, reverb pedals, and laptop,
Ikin has crafted a deeply cinematic, narcotic journey full of dank atmospheres, unease, and terror -- real '80s horror-movie music -- like a diseased, corroded version of the scores of
John Carpenter or
Vangelis. "Partial" opens the album with a haunting howl of cavernous reverb. Something is lurking in the trees behind that decrepit basketball backboard. Buzz-saw synth clanks, burbles, and rumbles with a thrumming bass pulse cut through with an urgent, shuffling, synthetic beat. "Haze Shimmer" is disorienting, like searching for the source of alien sounds in a fog swept by occasional searchlight beams. The sound of tires rushing by on wet asphalt opens and continues throughout "Crosstalk," whose stark beauty is like driving through rain to an unknown destination. "Tap Tap Collapse" is a race through a dystopian cityscape, with harsh metallic shrieks, an urgent rhythm, and a rising bass pulse like someone firing up a particle accelerator. "Smoke Hood" is the album's centerpiece -- long, slow, loping, and deliberate -- an industrial nightmare of clanks and scrapes with pounding, reverberating percussion, and shimmering washes of ghostly melody. On the lurching "Auto Dialer," you're jumpy, lost in the trees with a ringing in your ears. "Pulp" begins with emptiness, isolation, and an arctic wind howling across the tundra before a lone traveler on a snowmobile heaves into view. "Closer Closer" ends the album with a thrumming bass pulse and the buzzing of what sounds like angry bees. Something is coming closer... closer... The whole album is wonderfully cohesive, very much of a piece, and extremely visually evocative, like a film score. A great album to lose yourself in, to soundtrack your own dystopian nightmares. ~ John D. Buchanan