MOONSONGS

A step up from their interesting but slightly unfocused debut album, Moonsongs shows a more mature and relentless new edge to TP's musical vision. The material is fairly dark, edgy and delightfully creepy throughout, with several mindboggling twists lurking everywhere, and while all of it is on a very dissonant note, TP's unique sense of melody and rhythmic challenges makes this album good for dozens of repeated listenings. Highlights are the gritty and apocalyptic opener "Warheads", which starts out right in your face with spiky and jagged rhythms before segueing into a most atmospheric and pessimistic purgatory, and the monolithic title track, which features intruging tribal percussion for a good rhythmic start before going into a forest of strange vocal samplings (reminiscent of Jarre's 'Zoolook' album from '84) and bizarre couplings of jazz, avantgarde classical and brutal industrial rock.

Finishing a TP album is like finishing a good, twisted horror movie - you simultaineously get mindfucked and euphoric, yet can't really shake the thing off for a few days. This is some really dark and weird music but any adventurous listener should check these guys out. Their 1989 masterpiece "In This Life" is also recommended!