Sinner DC: Mount Age

Ai, 2006

Mount Age cover

Well, this is just superb—like My Bloody Valentine sharing a bath with Gas (meaning Mike Ink as opposed to carbon monoxide or something like that). Sinner DC’s sound is an extremely distorted foggy techno pop—warm but lonely shimmers buried under treated feedback that is both experimental and accessible. Mount Age’s songs don’t really develop so much as evolve in layers. “Everything is Sand” sounds just like that, opening with drowned piano and repetitive techno beat. A rusty echoing vocal is glimpsed through the mournful landscape as a monolithically aching but distant slide guitar tears up the sun. As the techno throb builds, a distorted fuzz guitar joins the trek and without warning the beat accelerates. A more welcome and unpredictable introduction you couldn’t have dreamed of.

It’s difficult to truly deconstruct these popscapes—influences and reference points may appear obvious at first but don’t quite explain the overall sound, already distinctly Sinner DC’s own. Julien Amey’s subterranean bass has an urgent dance floor in its sights and Steve Mamie’s beats are crisply elevated above the blurry fog of guitar voice and toy organ delivered by Manuel Bravo. Despite the separation it all works perfectly. There is an emotionally hazy swoon languidly smothering the whole album which is affecting enough already, but when extraordinarily processed strings unfurl over gated guitar on “They Never Stay,” your heart will miss more than a few beats.

This is simply one highlight out of eleven, though. A genuinely sublime work then, a surprise to these ears and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

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