X Marks The Pedwalk
Insomnia
Meshwork Music
Much like this website’s namesake Gary Numan, X Marks The Pedwalk’s rebooted career has now lasted sizably longer and yielded more LPs than their original incarnation. But now, with fifteen years and eight LPs since 2010’s Inner Zone Journey, an odd parallel can be traced between this current era and their previous incarnation. While X Marks’ original run was marked by a progression from murky dark electro to an ahead of the curve hybridization of industrial and trance, Insomnia brings another progression into focus. After beginning the second part of their career in darkwave/electro territory, Insomnia shows how adept the duo has become at delivering understated but still hooky and warm synthpop.
Sure, many of the core sounds to be found on Insomnia aren’t especially far off from some earlier material – the chillier pings of opener “A Heart In The Dark” and some version of the loping pulse of “Lines” could have found their way into tracks on The Sun, The Cold And My Underwater Fear or The House Of Rain. But Insomnia crystalizes the distinctly synthpop moves X Marks has been making for a couple of records, and does so with some very big attention grabbers. First single “Light Your Mind” is, quite simply, the most infectiously melodic thing to ever come out of the X Marks camp, its elegantly squared off synths and bubbly beats falling and rising to meet its vocal hook. Later, the neon-slicked kicks and tight arpeggios of “Automatic Hero” bring to mind the thrilling, dramatic sugar rush of early Ashbury Heights.
While tunes like those two are amongst the most immediately memorable on Insomnia, the rest is thankfully not padded out with swings and misses at similarly direct fare. Instead, the softer and less insistent sides of synthpop and electropop give Insomnia a sense of full dimensionality, and are ultimately most representative of the mood of the record which hangs about after a few plays. “One Minute” is far less immediately insistent than some of the other pre-release singles, but on replays the subtle grace of the plucked synth strings woven between the skipping beats and vocals gives it a complexity of colour. In a different style, “Bury Me” gets a lot of mileage out of one simple, plaintive repetition of the title framed by suitably dramatic chord changes and harmonic ramp-ups on the chorus (it’s in the details of a track like that that one’s reminded of just how far André Schmecta’s compositional ambitions took X Marks in the mid-90s).
X Marks has been a family affair ever since the reboot, with Schmecta’s wife Estefania lending vocals from Inner Zone Journey onward. It’s worth noting that their son Luis, who’s been releasing his own material here and there under the handle LMX, has contributed lyrics to Insomnia. While the course charted by X Marks has led to Insomnia‘s synthpop focus as part of a natural progression, there’s something sweetly symbolic about an entire family coming together to put together an album this melodic and winsome.
