- Either madness or genius is responsible for releasing Louderbach's exquisite goth-techno in April. Be careful with this one in warm weather: Drop Autumn at your next rooftop barbeque and you're likely to be charged as an accomplice in several fatal self-kebabings. The second full-length by Troy Pierce and Gibby Miller is suffused with nocturnal menace, a solid and dynamic slice of sinister synth cabaret and EBM slow-jams for the cemetery. Wrap this in iconic cover art that recalls Peter Saville's landmark work for Factory, and you've got the perfect birthday gift for the special ghoul in your life.
Autumn feels conceptual but not calculated, enlivened by its host of influences rather than imprisoned by them. It recalls Thomas Brinkmann's When Horses Die, except this record sounds much more lively and organic, staying on the dance floor, playing off the energy of a collaboration that allows each party the freedom to do what they're best at. Miller's icy rasping floats disembodied over crisp 808 rumble, producing a gaping abyss between man and machine, the two sides in concert, dancing around a void, like Plastikman playing host to Ian Curtis.
The vocals rarely turn into actual singing—sometimes, as on "She" it carries on a background narration, elsewhere like in "So This Is Control" it blurts out disjointed declarations. Only on the album single "Shine" do they approach something like a pop tune, where vocal melody and chords rise out of the ice and shadows to coalesce into a sliver of a catchy hook. Pierce keeps full command of his stone-gray techno palette, always doing more with less, creating a shadowy but minimal murk, abundant with low-end and dashes of eerie frozen synthesizers.
Things crest with "Nothing More Than a White Poison," where Pierce's electronics threaten to swallow Miller's brutish come-ons altogether, as if the delirious swell of a drunken libido would rip the speaking ego to shreds, leaving behind only blind, bestial compulsion. The club hosts a horror show: think the opening to Tony Scott's vampire flick The Hunger, with Bauhaus playing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" while Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie fatally seduce two hapless, horny club-kids. A similar bloodlust runs throughout Autumn, that of the solitary predator, friendless and hungry, each tune the sound of his claws dragging across the barren earth.
Tracklist 01. Autumn
02. Seems Like Static
03. One Hundred Reasons
04. Notes
05. Nothing More Than a White Poison
06. She
07. So This Is Control
08. Sunspots
09. Shine