Weekly album: Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

2016 / Synthwave

1. Neo Tokyo

2. Weapons for Children

3. Death Squad

4. Femme Fatale (Feat. Highway Superstar)

5. Venger (Feat. Greta Link)

6. Disco Inferno

7. She Moves Like A Knife

8. Sentient (Feat. Hayley Stewart)

9. Diabolus Ex Machina

10. Assault

11.  The Cult of 2112

12. Soult At Zero (Feat. Astronoid)

13. The Uncanny Valley

tp5170: To be frank I have never been the biggest fan of how most Pertubator’s albums are structured with the lengthy song intros and the stuff going on between the tracks. I mean some times those things have their own charm and so on, but at the same time more often those also make the albums a bit annoying to follow by creating unnecessary breaks between the songs. And this brings me to my point – there is none of that on nonsense on ‘The Uncanny Valley’, and I dig it. While this might be pretty trivial thing for most people, I found myself simply enjoying this album probably more than any other Perturbator album on the first spin because of its straightforwardness.

All in all ‘The Uncanny Valley’ represents the same style and quality I would have expected from Perturbator - meaning it’s pretty darn solid, and in my opinion it’s even capable of competing in quality with the best releases of Perturbator.

Orostider: If there currently are certain genres that are hot and gaining ground, synthwave is one of them. The crawl out of underground started to be notable after Kavinsky's Nightcall was featured in the 2011 movie 'Drive.' After 2011 the popularity of the genre has risen quite a bit. Video games and movies, such as Hotline Miami and Kung Fury increased the heat and on top of them Blood Music started to do some serious work in synthwave scene. All of this combined and probably more have caused the 'synthwave boom' to gain it's current form. The brand new 'Stranger Things' series is also helping with the next wave of John Carpenter and 80's action flicks influenced synth madness.

I myself got familiar with synthwave in 2011 through Kavinsky's EPs and I've been following the scene grow ever since. Perturbator got my attention after releasing 'Terror 404' and managed to impress me almost instantly. His early and current releases are quite similar in a way, but there's a clear movement towards darker, heavier sounds and topics. The cheerier 'miami vice' tunes have been present in every release and add variation quite well. 'The Uncanny Valley' is a clear continuum to 'Dangerous Days' both music- and theme-wise.

Perturbator's grim synthwave, or as some people say darkwave, has a distinct sound which separates him from the rest of the seemingly endless sea of synthwave artists. The formulae he has found have turned out to produce two absolutely solid albums, even though their overall sound is terrifyingly similar. If the next Perturbator album has something completely new I'm eternally glad, but I wouldn't mind third album using these patterns. One could think that 80's influenced electro could be monotonous. To some point the statement is correct and considering the absolutely massive amount of artists, it's quite hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Perturbator is definitely the wheat.

'The Uncanny Valley' includes the good old and safe darkwave, but the sudden bass lines and even one whole song with obvious jazz influences result in an album that isn't completely predictable. Certain things are predictable, but that's one of the ideas of the genre. If a listener is already familiar with lighter themed synthwave, the 'heaviness' and gloominess of Perturbator might actually be surprising. But nothing's better than getting caught off guard. 

This album isn't a drastic exception in Perturbator discography, but it shows that he still has unrevealed aces up his sleeve. And even though I sort of dislike synthwave's mainstream attention, I'm glad that the artists receive what they deserve. The thing I'm the most happy with is the fact that synthwave phenomenon has helped close-minded metalheads to realize that there's a lot more than metal music out there. 

If synthwave is still unknown to anyone, my recommendation is to start with either this album or the previous one, 'Darkest Days' and then move on to other albums and artists.

Favourite tracks: 'Disco Inferno', 'She Moves Like A Knife', 'Sentient'

btcarey:  I’ll start off by saying that Synthwave is a completely foreign genre to me. One that I didn’t even know existed until about a year ago, and since, have only heard the name mentioned randomly. For those of you like me, who have little to no concept of what “Sythwave” actually is, I’ll give you the beginner’s tutorial. Synthwave is a form of modern(ish) electronic music that pays homage to retro 80’s soundtracks and culture. The music is usually centered on the synthesizer and, other than the occasional sample, is often purely instrumental. Unlike techno or dubstep, synthwave’s focus isn’t completely based on rhythm or melodies (although they are important); it’s the atmosphere that plays a key role in the music, giving the listener a much more immersive experience.

Now that we all know what synthwave is, we can talk about this week’s album, Perturbator’s “The Uncanny Valley” (which just so happens to be sythwave). In all honestly the album blew me away. I’ve been listening to “The Uncanny Valley” as well as the rest of Perturbator’s discography all week and I love it. This being said, I’m not entirely sure, if it’s Perturbator, more specifically “The Uncanny Valley”, that I love or the synthwave genre in general.

Due to my meager background, I really don’t have anything to compare with (besides the soundtrack to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon), resulting in the possibility that I’m giving the album more credit than it deserves. Whether or not this is true, “The Uncanny Valley” is a very approach album, and great for noobs like me. Plus, it was apparently good enough to get me hooked, so I think you should all go give it a listen.