- If I told you Sinner DC sits somewhere between Sigur Rós, Nathan Fake and The Field with a bluesey, melancholy bent, many of you would run for the hills faster than you can say "Berlin." Hold up.
After all, Matthew Dear circa Asa Breed and Fairmont have shown that just because you're melancholy doesn't mean you're a drippy Converse-wearing teenager hung up on girls you'll never get. Such an introspective bent—tamed and directed by talent and maturity—yields records that reward with repeated listening, giving up their treasures to those willing to switch on, stare out a window at the vast sky and let their minds wander.
Swiss trio Sinner DC's fourth album mixes this inward-looking sensibility with the precision and quality typical of an Ai release, and the effect is enchanting. Each track has an organic feel but with synthetic sounds that could only come from obsessive attention to every synthesized detail. The feeling of fading grandeur is all pervasive, as if you're caught in the distant afterburn of something wonderful but never there to see it actually happen. As a result, it's often not what's going in the foreground that's most engaging, but all the delights in the back, such as the bubbling and fading effects and squeaks on "Sunrized."
What Sinner DC share with The Field is a reliance on repetition—sections are built up to run until the end of the track. But instead of a beautiful phrase worked over until you're in a state of joy/madness, Sinner DC add layers and textures to give their tracks the depth that Axel Willner's loops lack. There's also more variety—from Nathan Fake-esque stormers like "Golden Horses" to Coast" and "V," which out-Burial Burial for half-lit, post-rave emotionally intense brilliance.
Crystalised does have a few duffers, hence the rating, but they'll quickly be forgotten when you get to "Glass Alley." It's the album's triumph by a country mile and will have you smiling at the sunset, the clouds, the radiator, the shirt on the back of your door or whatever you eyes happen to fall on when it's on. It encapsulates everything Sinner DC are about and, more than that, sums up better than anything you'll hear this year Border Community's mantra of "blurring the boundaries between the bedroom and the dance floor."
Tracklist 01. Go For The Stream
02. Anyway
03. Golden Horses
04. The Medium Is The Message
05. V
06. Sunrized
07. Glass Alley
08. Digital Dust
09. Coast