CD, Deadsix Communications, 2007
www.murderbystatic.com
Murder By Static really should be one of those bands that excite me. An artist who manages to fuse together a lot of my favourite genres effortlessly and produce something with a style all of its own. Also going from previous releases and reviews there of, then this should definitely be to my tastes.
Such a shame that this particular release did not live up to my expectations. If I’d have heard this release a couple of years ago, I would have been singing the praises of Murder By Static from the rooftops, but this time around, sadly this is not to be.
‘Luxicon Phase’ starts with ‘Q-Bis’, not the strongest of tracks to begin with and too many repetitive loops to really drag the listener in. The pace improves with ‘Tichneque’ which is a fairly impressive noise and drum and bass crossover, with random breaks and beats in all the appropriate places. ‘Bueden’ is easily the most interesting track available – slightly dub sounding breaks with a spooky, unsettled melody to begin with and then sliding its way in to breakcore about half way through. ‘E Tounz’ is noisy, beat driven fare, but not particularly spectacular, and some of the beats sound like they have been recycled from earlier tracks. ‘Vithris’ is nicely chilled out fare to end on, but not a particular highlight.
The one big problem with ‘Luxicon Phase’ is the lack of soul. Electronic music does have that problem on occasion, but it’s usually avoided with lots of heavy beats and distortion to make it sound interesting; but this release is too clean, clever, too mixed up. Covering all genre bases is a great idea, but one that rarely works.
In the future I think Murder By Static will be best served by doing a much more pure release – sticking with one genre and really working with it. He has talent, no doubt of that, but he needs to refocus his energies and focus on what he is best at, rather than try and play around with everything.
[5/10]
— Kate Turgoose