Chalk
Crystalpunk
ALTER Music
Irish duo Chalk trade in the sort of synth-heavy machine rock stylings favoured in recent years by acts like Odonis Odonis and Houses of Heaven. Like those acts, the music on their debut album Crystalpunk leans towards post-punk’s danceable rhythms and rock hooks, but is infused with electronic weight and atmospheres. Ross Cullen and Benedict Goddard’s aesthetic and production sensibility is strong and fully-formed (possibly due to their filmmaking and visual design backgrounds), a quality that informs and elevates its best material.
Crystalpunk really shines when it emphasizes rhythm over all other concerns, which thankfully it does more often than not. On the excellent “Can’t Feel It” synth bass and snappy breakbeat driven drums are spotlighted, minimal in complexity but given tremendous emphasis in the mix, belancing out Cullen’s vocal, the occasional guitar bend, sample of machine noise and glitchy stutter acting as details more than major parts of the arrangement. It works because the emotion of the song is given push by its charging tempo, deeply groovy and a with a touch of aggression to add to the heightened emotion. Alternately, instrumental “Skem” goes in hard on distorted, broken percussion sounds, not fully dipping into noise rock territory, but not that far off either. Its strength comes from how coarse and grating the design of the drums and rhythmic samples are, as contrasted with occasional breaks into cavernous, spring reverbed spaces.
That muscle in the rhythm section is just as useful in some of the more melodic cuts. Which is not to imply that this is an album with a ton of catchy melodies; the actual melody of most of the songs is generally expressed through a simple vocal or synth motif, and are rarely the main attraction. Mid-tempo head nodder “Longer” has a nice overdriven guitar sound, and one of Cullen’s more vulnerable performances on the microphone, its moodiness complimented by how tightly locked in its synthlines and meaty rock drums are. For my money, the record’s highlight is the tremendous late album number “Béal Feirste”, where a canned loop of sampled drums straight out of a 90’s sample CD set the mood for the song’s dreamy, vocoded singing, bouncy bass and Underworld-esque melancholy. It’s that simple loop that lies underneath it all that positions its emotions to successfully infiltrate the mind and feet of the listener, in true down-to-mope dance fashion.
Crystalpunk is one of those records that gets better with repeated exposure and immersion into its particular musical approach. A first pass might give you a nice taste of Chalk’s ability to make songs that move and breathe, but its only after a few spins that the arrangement of drums, bass, rhythmic percussion and samples truly start to take hold more than any individual hook or chorus. It’s a fine approach that should work for dancefloors or rock clubs with equal impact.
