WL//WH Review PARADOX OBSCUR
Kriistal Ann, Toxic Razor – Paradox Obscur
‘Morphogenesis’ LP is the brand new album by Paradox Obscur (GR) and it was released on May 6 (Vinyl, CD, Digital) via Metropolis Records (USA). This new record has 9 new gems all written, produced, and mixed by Kristal Ann and Toxic Razor, mastered at Soundcave Studios Athens by the ‘TheMute’, and has also a special contribution to the lyrics of 2 songs by François Ducarn (Chroma Carbon) from Factice Factory. Now let’s go to the interior through the new hallmark style of this precious and very talented band that always excite me with their releases, and will always do something different and more peculiar as the years go by…
Paradox Obscur has been offering striking music through the years all in the shades of the darkwave widely with albums like ‘Noir’, ‘Anacrusis’, and ‘Artifact’, while things started taking a different form already with their previous album ‘SYNΘESIS’ back in 2020. These two musicians couldn’t be stuck for longer in a single soundscape, as emblematic, beautiful, and imposing as it is, and if you have tried their side projects and their solo releases too then obviously you’d get that things there have shown for a long time that one day all these would change the course and the style of their band. On March 23 they unveiled the official video for ‘Animal Reactor’ the first leading track off the new record, and our sister in WL//WH, Catt Gillette wrote about it –
“Animal Reactor” triggers alluring auras fusing electronic layers of quick undulating bassline danger, distant ticking domains, fearful breaths, scattered, crackling beats, obsessive sparkling stabs, and icy-bright synth synapses into an enthralling spatial cosmos of swirling sensations around commanding breathy vocalizations, releasing depth-defying echoes of possessed animal energy into a neon-lit dancefloor bliss
The coldwave blend with the new beat now flirting with the tech-house started taking over the old darkwave style of the band, a change that is ‘struggling’ not to spoil or ‘offend’ the original (s)core of their souls in the new fabulous adventure, and on April 27 they published another specimen from ‘Morphogenesis’ LP; the official video of ‘Wild Silk‘ that is somehow the platform to the new era combining the darkness of the past with their new lively illumination.
Now, ‘Morphogenesis’ LP starts with the sheer retro-wave instrumental synthwave tune ‘Cocoon’ that opens the way very spectacularly with neon sounds over a notable bliss. I am so positively surprised that I only found 2-3 ‘dark’ songs in the album as the rest are all a chain bundle with well-studied synth-wave tunes on new-beat that are all addressed openly to ears more ‘flexible’ and yet without trying to create any new trend around their name and fame, I found that the way they will change their destiny is simply based on their need to equate what they have in their minds and hearts with characteristic fairness and candor. In their dark times, Paradox Obscure used to create the most fearless and imposing darkwave chants, now that they enter the new era and the dark is not so insistently attached to their souls they will unveil systematically their whole contemporary palette. Try ‘Stellaire’, try ‘Evo-Devo’, ‘Monoclone’, and ‘Pollar’ too, and last, go wild to the dancefloor in your living room with the last song of the record, ‘In Vitro’, where they close ‘Morphogenesis’ LP with a glorious after-hours tune.
One thing is for sure and so obvious under the sun; on each of their new releases they know how to nail you and that know-how stems directly from their relentless talent in music and the artistic complexity of their own characters. No more words from me, here is the new album ‘Morphogenesis’ by Paradox Obscur, turn it loud!!!
Keep up with Paradox Obscur:
Paradox Obscur
Written by Loud Cities’ Mike
