Reviews

Welcome to the world of Ladytron.  Not so unlike a female version of the semi-popular arcade game of the 80’s, or the previously disappointing 1982 film, but an entirely different world nevertheless.  Ladytron’s new album, “Witching Hour,” is an electronic mélange of futuristic symphony melded into a blend of sorcerous incantations.  It is a chaotic blend of instrumentation and experimentation.  This is what Disco-Pop should be.

Ladytron is a composition of two women, Mira Arroyo and Helena Marnie, and two men, Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu.  Arroyo and Marnie provide the vocals and harmonizing that inspire both a sense of motherly love and escapism at the same time.  Add their voices to the ecstatic and meditative synthesizers and somniferous drum beats, and it’s easy to see how well their name fits their music.

Breaking from their previous albums, Ladytron incorporated guitars and more electronics into many of their songs, creating a world where Garbage and Enigma collide.  This is what laser-light shows, acid trips, and raves are made for: creative, innovative, chaotic, hypnotic, and at times, disquieting music.  It’s like going through a time-warp, the feeling one might get while free-falling through a wormhole, spinning, free floating – a dizzying sensation of weightlessness.

The title of the album, “Witching Hour,” is apropos as there is a sense of irksome magic operating throughout the entire album.  The track “Beauty*2” is a slow, trancing, techno track with hypnotizing harmonies and vocals.  It is the sort of song that creates a slow groove in the midst of a gradually-fading twilight, like the feeling of just coming out of a deep slumber in the early morning darkness.  “Destroy Everything You Feel” is an electro-pop club track that would not feel out of place in the 1980’s; bands like New Order, Dead or Alive, and Depeche Mode come to mind when listening to this track and many others throughout the album.

Many of their lyrics focus on quelling the false sense of modern relationships and the angst that so often lies in conjunction.  Songs about destroyed relationships, loves lost, loves never found, hope, desire, loneliness, solitude, and the absence of intimate conjunction, fill the album from start to finish.

If you’re looking to explore the outer realms of both reality and your own imagination, then turn off the lights, light some candles, lie down on the couch, and travel to the world of Ladytron, where magic and mystery await you.