The Soft
Uncanny Valley
September 24 2013 (Ceremony)
9/10
Words: Linn Branson
The thing about electronic music is that unless you’re doing a copious amount of mind-altering drugs whilst listening to it, it can often be as dull and repetitively boring as the proverbial ditchwater. And don’t even bother to start on the live experience, which is normally consists of a couple of blokes twiddling and pressing things on computer pads…yawn.
With the above therefore in mind, The Soft’s EP comes not only as a surprise, but a very pleasurable one to boot. Over 21 minutes and four tracks, the Suffolk trio have created a pretty fine little EP – and that applies even if your musical appetites lay elsewhere other than this field.
Co-produced by Luke Abbott, ‘Uncanny Valley’ is one of those works of such indefinable quality it is hard to know how to describe it. Opening track ‘Painted’ (undoubtedly the most instantly orgasmic electronic track heard since Man Without Country’s ‘Inflammable Heart’ of three years ago) contains gloriously glitchy beats spread over a pulsed drone beat, reverberating guitars and layered subtle vocals. ‘Bewilder’ incorporates an almost Asian style dub vocal over a mesmerising trance-like five minutes of swathes of sound. Nestled in between, ‘Prana’ traverses the graceful spaceness in synthetics and hazy, woozy electronica, whilst ‘Uncanny Valley’ careers like a cantering horse, broken with syncopated vocal sampling.
It may be that this style of trance/house is best suited to a club environment, however, here again The Soft break the mould. This could so easily be envisaged in a chapel or church setting, allowing the acoustics to augment and fill the larger spaces, which it would indeed do perfectly.
Spellbinding. Perfect. Hypnotic. One of the best track collections I have heard this year.
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