For Christmas Day (and to cap off 2020), Michael Ferentino has released a piping-hot Bedtime for Robots album: Apocryphal of Posy. To say the least, this Black Box Recordings release makes for quite the electronic feast.
The content bounces off a trio of emotional platforms: dual perspectives, dangerous dreams and heated hideaways, all within a constant, yin-and-yang subtext. There's also potential mix-and-matching among the ingredients if one should so choose, but the blend in the end proves as smooth as the tastiest stew.
For the sake of his dual-view selections, Ferentino dishes a tasty title track, which by its very name covers hypocrisy, pretense and capitulation all on one fine, groovin' lump. "Apocryphal of Posy" does just what it's supposed to do, for its cutting edge belies its title, dispatching a mocking message in such a jazzy way as to twist one's perception into separate vantages: degrading the degraded, while presenting a core that's as creamy as it's dreamy.
Others in this dynamic, thematic batch consist of the squishy "Double Glove"; the super spy-vibe "From the Bunker"; the percussive "Endure"; the Carpenter-esque "A Deer in the Headlights of Love"; and the placating "The Prophesy". They paint comparable forms of duality, with a spice of catatonia among their variances. In their own specialized manners, they ask that one aspire to hope and dream, even though doom and gloom invade. As such, the set's sounds project an ideal, double whammy, moving in an up-and-down, electrical beat: always ambivalent, yet determined to seize focus.
I would also add "Viva La F*ck" as an adieu to this cluster: a rattling salute to Adam Ant (if only in label), which dips from the two-view twist just enough to warm up the next category.
For his queue of dangerous dreams, Ferentino throws one into an allegorical spider's web: a beckoning of enticement, but more so lethal slippage. The shrewd fold is most profound in the rubbery and part-slicing "Dissection of a Supermodel", but a brush of underlying destruction rises equally so in "Slaughter of the Golden Dawn", where the wavering chords confirm one's worst fears.
"Death is a Portal" and "Faceshift" push the baroque, Anton Phibes envelope even further, sounding anguished, obsessive and regal, much like a gooey piece of gum chewed to a strenuous, die-hard peak.
For the sake of the culminating aftertaste, there's the hammering "Ministry of Truth" (its incessant sweep invoking what we both wish to know and ignore) and the testy "Luciferian Dream", where the Faustian notes flick like flames, as one falls ever farther into the pit of punishment for that goddamn, brooding chew.
Like "Viva La F*uck", "Luciferian" behaves as both an epilogue and prologue, symbolizing the penultimate avenue one travels to avert one's seedy deeds. This "Luciferian" offspring never once cowers with the lame need for forgiveness, but rather presents deep, hideaway pulsations that nurture a full-blown, punkish descent.
For example, "The Grim Song" is molded for digging ever deeper into a personal, echoing cavern, and "Fright Wig" is the thing one dons, just to ensure that the condemners flee if they dare see. "Produkt 19" is the promising plate one licks to stabilize oneself beneath all that verbose "World Piss", with "Sordid Out" being that toe-tapping, moment when one digests the gamut of the brimming stench.
"Shadow Work" and "Lolly Sun" follow as slow-teasing tips of the same righteous rope from which one might hang, but after their sighs subside, "Lullagoodbye" takes it all in under-the-covers stride: Be a freak or fool; either option has been earned. Now, it's time to rest and accept life's contradictory consequences for all the gaseous gluttony they spur.
As mentioned earlier, any of the album's compositions can be juxtaposed to enhance one's listening experience, for when all is said and done, they can't help but complement one another, and when properly stirred, their resulting flavor makes this particular Bedtime for Robots extravaganza a supreme smorgasbord.
Nibble a bit here and there. No matter the arrangement, it's all delicious to the ears:
https://blackboxrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/apocryphal-of-posy?fbclid=IwAR38tNU4KwHPCMEawyMwtPLlIZpKnoL3MDdYWzQMSzImPOb5f0nZZk7pyiY
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