Ascend is the first full length release by the Toronto-based duo of Christos Adamidis and Cosimo Valela, collectively known as Dasein.
Their music is, for the most part, straightforward and refreshingly purist dance industrial. Although not hugely original, it's nice to hear music of this type that hasn't leapt aboard the techno bandwagon or thrown in grinding metal guitars and holds to its EBM roots.
The ingredients here are familiar - a solid, driving beat, meaty synths (nice analogue sounds), and plenty of distortion (both instrumental and vocal). True, it's a bit anachronistic and is characteristic of a sound that reached its peak 3-5 years ago, but I've personally missed the passing of the older dance industrial sound and welcomed the opportunity to reacquaint myself with it.
The influences? Well, there's some overlap between the group's claimed influences and those that are audible to this reviewer, but I personally hear definite traces of Nitzer Ebb and Nine Inch Nails (specifically Reznor's older material), while some of the sparser analogue arrangements recall The Klinik. Most of the tracks here tread the fine line between sounding derivative and showing originality. They tend towards the former a little too often, but they do at least demonstrate a knack for a good tune that has nothing to do with stylistic influences.
The one big exception to this is "Nothing", the second track. This couldn't sound more like Nine Inch Nails if someone had stapled Trent Reznor to it. It's a NIN track musically, vocally and lyrically. However, the title does lead me to suspect that the resemblance might be intentional.
Two of the tracks here stand out as rather more original than the rest. Perversely, these are the two for which Dasein give direct acknowledgements in the sleeves notes. "Confusion" uses excerpts from Shostakovich Symphony No. 13, overlaying them with a sinister, hypnotic beat and dark, mournful synths (there are *lots* of these on this album) with good results . Very effective, and the weird, lengthy outro works well too. "Falling Down" is equally atypical. Swirling synths and voices give way to half-sung, half-chanted Greek poetry that sounds (to my uneducated ear, at least) somewhat Dead Can Dance-ish (if DCD can be pinned down to a single sound, which they can't).
I like the album. It's not particularly original, but several of the songs demonstrate that there's definite talent here and not just skilled mimicry. However, I suspect that my own fondness for this particular brand of dance industrial has overridden my critical faculties to some degree, A good first effort; a few years back I'd have raved about this one, but nowadays I'll just have to restrict myself to mild enthusiasm. I'd recommend this highly to any fans of industrial dance music.
Dasein is currently distributed in the U.S. by Dutch East India, 81 N Forest Ave, Rockville Centre, NY 11570, Telephone number 516 764 6200. Haus also has a World Wide Web site, located at http://www.io.org/~haus
- Al Crawford
