WELCOME TO THE AGE OF FLAWS

Post Berlin/Bay Area school´s electronic music

6LA8 a.k.a. Taimur Mazhar Sheikh and Omer Asim´s Welcome To The Age Of Flaws (2019) is the kind of fresh air Progressive Electronic music needs to continue its journey through change and evolution.

A 16 track release spanning 1 hour 55 minutes is, well at least, ambitious but maintaining diverse quality music composition the same as the listeners attention with trance-inducing surprises all throughout is masterful (its minor flaws are overshadowed by its constant merits).

Describing what to expect from 6LA8 music wise is quiet a challenge. I will take the easy way out first by describing what it doesn´t sound ike .

No real close connection to neither the 70´s or 80´s nor 90´s Progressive Electronic´s famous icons. If needed I could trace some footprints to Syrinx- Long Lost Relatives (1971), White Noise- An Electric Storm (1969) (without the Juan GarcIa Esquivel blatant rip-offs) or the more contemporary and untaggable Sparkle in Grey.

Ok now the hard task. Welcome To The Age Of Flaws diverse music directions may well include Krautrock, RiO, Post Rock/Math Rock, electro/acoustic world/urban sounds & Avant Garde aesthetics (this last without its usual cerebral pretentions). The acoustic guitar plays a major role , there are vocals even lyrics, its dreamy nature has nothing to to do with its usual association with soporific music composition opposite to that this characteristic is really an attribute being attained with extraordinary rich and enticing melodic lines and creative but kept in size arrangements. It also displays some Jazz/Blues subtle & heavy brushstrokes here and mostly not there and of course lots of electronic music inventiveness. A real thrill to close it up!

And to top it all off this 4.5 stars release is available through Bandcamp in the FREE DOWNLOAD mode, really, what more can one ask for?

'6LA8' is a progressive electronic band made up of two friends from Pakistan that formed the project in 2009 and use both electronic and acoustic instruments to create a sound with a lot of variance. Instead of copying off of the traditional electronic music of Vangelis or Tangerine Dream where the music is based off of themeatic elements more or less, 6LA8 utilize effects and etc. to create feelings, or soundscapes, without hardly any use of melody and when melody is used, it is not necessarily front and center, but buried in the layers of sound. From 2010 until the current year of 2019, they have released 22 albums including this album 'Welcome to the Age of Flaws'. The album consists of 16 tracks, only one of which is under the 5 minute mark, the entire album spanning over 2 hours. The album was available for download on January 1, 2019.

'Let's Take a Breather: Recoup, Reconfigure' is a slow burning variant drone that plays in the background while an acoustic guitar plays a repeated pattern. Later electronic effects of processed broken tones buzz in and out on top of everything while subdued percussion plays softly. Next is the title track 'Welcome to the Age of Flaws' which is the shortest track on the album at 4:40. Beginning with a repeated electronic pattern, bass and other layers get added, including a spoken word vocal recording that sound like a woman talking to an imaginary child, but her tone is a bit unsettling and somewhat psychotic. 'Dissecting the Magnanimous Among Us (featuring Spiare)'. This starts off quite pleasant with an electronic percussive beat and other nice sounds, but giving a slightly upbeat feel until other percussive sounds come in that are strangely off beat and unsettling. The track seems to want to be nice, but ends up feeling oddly out of synch. By the end, it all seems to get ironed out again.

'Laughing Quietly in a Valley of Kind Nepotism' forms slowly off of a strange drone. A keyboard playing in a higher register forms an odd melody out of it which changes to pulsating sounds and a swirling pattern on top of it, slightly off key to give it all that abnormal feel. This all increases in intensity as chopped and skewed vocal effects ebb and flow throughout it all. As it regresses later, there are some really cool electronic effects. 'A Recursion in Denial, and a Deliverance' starts with a subdued, almost harp-like pattern while a spoken word narrative from Behenchari Diaries goes on above it all. The music does build somewhat, but remains underneath the narrative. 'The 100 Day Dogma Decryption' uses soft keyboard and guitar notes and a soft drone while a cymbal ticks along. Everything is a bit off-kilter as layers get added in slowly, including barely discernable vocals and later, a sax sample playing in the distance. Everything is glued together, but so separate from each other making for an odd, yet interesting texture.

'How to Deconstruct on a Tremendous Day, The Best Day' feels like a brighter track, but utilizes a lot of the same things as in the previous track, this time with a more positive edge, yet all of these sounds, including a far off choir and bird effects, seem to mesh together into a false sense of security. 'Dancing Regressively into the Next Civil Regime (ft. Sririam)' uses loops and samples from traditional instruments such as sitar, native American flute and a thumb piano. The beat is handled by clapping and the feel has that mid-eastern feel, but it is all smothered by effects making everything unclear and almost drone like, including the Turkish vocal sample. Later, it all breaks down as the entire sound of the track is chopped and diced into little electronic pieces. 'A Moonlit Dharma into the Tetris of Roadblocks' has a brighter sound with chimes, piano and other higher pitched instruments, but later, as synths using lower registers darken the landscape of the track. As the track continues, it gets dismantled and put together alternatively.

'Hold Your Sanity, Dear Aphrig (ft. Natasha Noorani)' begins with an ambient guitar strum and soft bass. The Natasha mentioned in the title provides fragile and subdued vocals against subdued, yet chiming and twinkling keys. The 8+ minute track remains soft and ambient throughout. 'Tired and Left Waiting for Twilight's Heatsinks' has a very jazzy feel to it, but is still given the unclear ambient feel that permeates the album. Things get more and more unclear as things continue and layers get added. There are contrasting tranquil textures and disquieting layers. At 7 minutes, the percussion stops and you find yourself free floating in sonic ambience. 'My Ethics Prefer to Be Fluid, Thank You (ft. Kavin Allinson)' ventures away from ambience with a keyboard and guitar playing more front and center than anything else previously. Spacey sounds and spooky vocal effects soon come in and start to bury everything in the usual unclear sound but this time with a psychedelic feel with the stoner style guitar and a high pitched synth that sounds almost like a saw.

'Playing Detectives, in Dreams, for Some Ease' begins with distorted acoustic chords and subdued male vocals. Drum samples are used for rhythm on this track. The vocals start out quite clear, but get lost in the hazy feel of the music. 'Breaking Apart into a Million Little Oh Wells (ft. Zhara)' goes back into ambient mode with a ponderous atmosphere, featuring both male wordless vocals and Zhara's melody-less airy vocals. The track is pretty much just acoustic meandering and some effects along with the dreamy, yet almost subliminal vocals. 'In Deviant Swirls Do We Derive Mortality' continues with the ambient feel with more acoustic sounds and vocal samples all mixed together in a subdued stew of softness. This just meanders on for 10 minutes. 'Wandering Around in a Whole Lot of Nothins (ft. Nomad)' features more meandering acoustic guitar with odd vocals. By this time, the name of the track pretty much explains it all.

While this dreamy, mostly ambient and ponderous electronic/organic sound is nice at first, and there is even some variation in the sound in the first half of the album, by the time you get to the end, you almost want to scream. It gets to sound too much like the same, in fact, it gets less interesting and more meandering as it continues, and the surprises at the beginning of the album become expected by the end. The overall sound of the tracks tend to flatten out to level hazy and monotonous music by the end. I can at least recommend the album as a 3 star album, but it is near impossible to get through it all in one sitting, and even coming back later to hear the 2nd half doesn't really help. I think the most interesting tracks are at the beginning, but by the time you get to the end, it's hard to think of anything that stands out. Think of this album as almost Shoegaze because of its use of hazy sound where nothing really stands out, with a mix of ambience because the level of the sound never really gets past mid-volume throughout. Yes these are more like soundscapes, like I mentioned before, but they are hazy and unclear. The band gets an A for being original and different, but they don't do so well at keeping someone's interest, especially for a 2 hour album.