STRANGE ATTRACTOR

"Strange Attractor" is the 8th full-length studio album by US rock act Mercury Rev. The album was released as an MP3 companion album to Mercury Rev´s 7th full-length studio album "Snowflake Midnight". Both albums were released on the 29th of September 2008. It´s possible to download "Strange Attractor" from the band´s official homepage. "Strange Attractor" has also been released as a bonus LP on the vinyl release of "Snowflake Midnight".

While "Strange Attractor" and "Snowflake Midnight" were released simultaneously there is quite a bit of difference between how they sound. "Snowflake Midnight" features and ambient and atmospheric rock style whith vocals but the music on "Strange Attractor" is atmospheric and ambient instrumental music and therefore pretty different from the more conventional vers/chorus strucured material on "Snowflake Midnight". It´s the type of ambient music that quickly becomes background music, because it´s simply not interesting enough to sit and listen to while solely concentrating on the music. It´s when Mercury Rev include rhythms on the otherwise predominantly rhythmless and ambient music, that they are most interesting. A track like "Loop, Lisse, Loop" is an example of one of the more catchy tracks that features rhythmic playing.

While "Strange Attractor" isn´t as such a bad quality album, the ambient nature of the product and the fact that it doesn´t make much impact and mostly works as background music, do drag my rating down. The sound production is professional and well sounding and the idea to make a very different sounding album, compared to the albums in their usual style, is bold too, but the outcome just isn´t that entertaining. A 2.5 star (50%) rating is fair.