- Supposedly envisioned as a concept album about deep sea life, Piemont's Strange World Beyond might at least be heard as an aural capture of the determination with which anything sub-surf moves in a rush toward the top. Piemont's Frederic Möring-Sack and Christian de Jonquieres scored with several early My Best Friend singles like "Carbonat" and "Black Smoker," both of which are included on this debut album for Traum's beefier sister-label. Though it's tempting to pick the record up for those cuts alone, the duo's a bit cagier in just how they round out their edges than those dance tracks might indicate. Blending sleek, bouncy minimalism with downier, fluffier pieces designed to soften the album's headstrong sense of pace, Strange World Beyond shows the Hamburg duo massaging the club-friendly sound they've become known for into a more balanced collection that doesn't devolve into a collection of singles dumped artlessly onto disc.
But despite their obvious effort to craft a proper full-length, Piemont still bind much of Strange World Beyond around their floor attractions. Both the stumpy tribalism of "Lighter than Seawater" and "Carbonat" reflect the effervescent techno that presumably gave the latter its name: they resemble bubbles taking shape in great lightless spaces of ocean, rising swiftly and breaking the surface against svelte bell tones and cloppy rhythms. "Carbonat" is particularly ascendant, consistently progressing and slyly shifting shapes around its bumpy central melody. "Black Smoker" expands from pixelated, ringing sounds into a beautifully inky, amorphous club tune, while their fifth MBF single "Central Mouth" is jumpy fat-assed techno with a jazzy cocktail swagger.
As the album begins to get a little protein-heavy, Piemont plate a little starch onto Strange World Beyond. Both the aptly-titled "Loss of Focus" and "Digits Died Out" shift toward spacious and mannered house interludes, where Piemont aren't concerned so much about the overcoming/advance dynamic of their singles as they are new expansions and envelopments. "Baillie Sounding Machines" offers another breathing point, a moment of patient, almost-ambient electronica, while "Lowest Layer" applies the duo's talent for heady minimalism that seems somehow still light and textured to a lush, synth-bedded closer.
If there are quibbles to make about Strange World Beyond, they develop from how some of its lesser material seems like skeletal retreads of their more successful releases. "Talk Flows Like a River" aims for "Carbonat"'s patient rise but without its more compelling atmospheres and the way it layers its gains like a slow staircase step, and both "Superheated" and "Eyeshine" steam more than they boil. At fourteen tracks, with one bonus for the digital release, the record is longer than it needs to be and that excess clogs its better stretches. But Piemont are perhaps the MBF stable's most interesting act, and Strange World Beyond stands as an investigation of things hell-bent on puncturing the ocean-top from such deep, black points of birth.
Tracklist 01. Intro
02. Cages Or Snares
03. Lighter Than Seawater
04. Carbonat
05. Talk Flows Like A River
06. Superheated
07. Loss Of Focus
08. Digits Died Out
09. Eyeshine
10. Strange World Beyond
11. Black Smoker
12. Central Mouth
13. Baillie Sounding Machines
14. Lowest Layer