Dalhous - The Composite Moods Collection Vol.2 (2021)

A decade since their debut on BEB, Dalhous make up for five years of silence with a typically bleak and demonically possessed new batch for Denovali.

The Scottish duo come off like a BoC raised on ‘80s horror and modern gothic RPG soundtracks, rather than analog wooze, in ‘The Composite Moods Collection Vol.2: Point Blank Range.’ Their 14 tracks are meticulously detailed with a modern production vernacular of ballistic percussion that has seeped from blockbuster movie soundtracks and computer games into deconstructed dance music and experimental classical styles in the past decade, but in their hands it is used to describe a fleeting mix of pastoral and brutalist themes with a keen sense of contemporary, sci-fi gothic dramaturgy that resonates with Burial as much as Synth Sense or Emptyset.

“From the outset, the album offers a narratively uncooperative stance, weaving together layers of anxiety and painful specificity that often overtly manifests the psychotic protagonist's stormy interior state. A clearly subjective assault, which is made evident right from opening track 'Transceivers' through to the imploding nature of 'Intramuscular Administration’, to the vulnerable, psychedelic mania of 'Open As A Glade Unfolding'. Continuing to work within the framework of a soundtrack-like structure, Dalhous ramps things up to provide the aural equivalent of sound and picture, manifesting an almost quasi-visual experience.

The entire record can be listened to as a continuous piece, each track seamlessly linked together as though part of an interconnecting nervous system. Where House Number 44 offered airy, widescreen soundscapes of detached detail, Point Blank Range presents an altogether different form. Creating airtight vacuums of agitated twitching feeling, tracks are pulled to the forefront of the stereo field, continually mutating their densely painted neurochemical hallucinations with a breadth of sound previously unheard on previous releases.”