Eutropic - Dark Age Day Dream (2021)

Dark Age Day Dream is “a concept record that obsesses over the nature of time! It’s our attempt to make sense of reality, so it’s full of contradictions and ambiguities.” It’s a sonic journey, which takes the basic idea of synth-pop and then turns it inside-out, side-ways and upside-down. By intuitively connecting dots between synth-based musics – late 70s classic electronica, cold and new wave as well as all types of iterations of techno – Eutropic created a singular amalgam of sound: simultaneously dance-floor friendly and the perfect companion to deep introspection.

Dark Age Day Dream is a very emotional and personal record, a document to three years of life with all the ups and downs that it entailed. It’s a body of work that is full of nuance, relying more on the use of gradients than solid colors or clear-cut contrasts. For listeners who love hyper-textual songwriting, there is a lot of that going on here. Sain-Exupery’s story Little Prince is referenced on Distant World, Michael Ende’s graphic novel Momo on Gray, while Terry Pratchett’s novel Thief of Time on Pieces. The choice of sub-topics is also quite a cornucopia: time travel post-apocalypse (Step Back), real-life zombies (Awake), God is dead / the new religion (Silicon God), the dehumanising effects of digital technology (Down By Law), our primal wonder and awe (Starry Sky) and much more.