Electroserge: Whispertime
Normoton

How to describe Electroserge's sound? Imagine a vocoder-voiced, analog-digital hybrid that pairs Morr Music's melodicism (the clicking beats and feathery female singing in the guitar-enhanced “Club Superphone”) with Solvent's electropop (the brief overture “Bitway To Heaven”). Vocals by 'Birgit' and 'Paul' (no last names, please) are sometimes slightly unpolished which isn't, surprisingly, off-putting but adds to the intimate, homemade feel—a case in point, the Guther-like “So You Are Sad,” as sweetly affecting and innocent as a campfire jamboree. The lightness in the group's sound is offset occasionally by a harder-edged sound (“Magnet Song” with its fuzz guitar noise); in the case of “Valentine Dream,” both facets appear simultaneously when bass throbs accompany music box sprinkles. More dramatic by comparison, the dirge-like “Play My Song” features heavier guitars nicely offset by a glockenspiel whose melodies brightly float over the darker undercurrent. Perhaps the group protests too much in the incongruously (or maybe ironically) titled “Rock_N_Roll Is My Religion” (since its vocodered electropop is anything but rock'n'roll) but that hardly negates the album's modest charm.

November 2004