TE-E-MA

'TE-E-MA' - Senmuth (6/10)

Capping off the year of 2010, Senmuth comes out to release another album, one that- on first glance- is different stylistically, at least as far as the album artwork is concerned. Although things have undoubtedly been quite slow for Senmuth to resume music in 2011, 'TE-E-MA' is a slightly more intelligent and textured piece of work than usual for this artist, making for a good listen to tie the Senmuth fan over until his next big release.

The music here is atmospheric, instrumental and- at times- surprisingly heavy. Essentially an amalgamation of Senmuth's diverse instrumental styles, a listener can hear electronica, folk, exotic ethnic, and metal all in one place, making this a very good place to start listening to this artist. Beginning with the fairly dark electronic/symphonic track 'Contour Of Events', the album's overture works as a strong, albeit derivative way to get the listener into the journey.

While the music here is almost entirely without vocals (the last track features some ambient singing) there are plenty of textures and different sounds at play here. Most tracks follow a general theme, and build around it. Unfortunately, very few of the ideas on 'TE-E-MA' stand out as being memorable or melodic, but the variety of sounds here can make for an engaging listen, especially for someone who hasn't heard Senmuth's music before.

'TE-E-MA' does feel like it's a regression back to the earliest Senmuth, where the order of the day was energetic industrial/electronic metal that was almost contagious in it's cheerful nature. While the album could have easily fit in back in 2005, there is certainly a more matured display and delivery here, with a great deal more variety than usual.

Unfortunately, Senmuth has still not solved many of his problems in the execution, including very fake sounding orchestral and instrumental sounds. Due to the fact that all of Senmuth's work is done on a home studio, the music's more ethnic style suffers from sounding fake and unpolished, although the electronic elements are done very well.

While 'TE-E-MA' is not a revelation for Senmuth and instead chooses to dig up an older sound, it is promising. Perhaps as a foreboding of what Senmuth will do in 2011, 'TE-E-MA' shows potential for his next piece of work. Until then, I shall wait for the Russian madman to find his inspiration and record once again.

The last album of one of the most prolific years of Senmuth is closed by this album. I have started reviewing his output with my review of Cognitive discord in August 2010 and I'm here only now in March 2012 with two more years to review.

Well, this album has a lot incommon with the debut one as it has less ethnic moments, even if they are present anyway, but in the same moment there's a return to the heavyness of the industrial works of the beginnings with some techno rhythms and some moments more ambient oriented that are those more in line with my tastes.

This means that tracks like "Divine Re-Equivalent" and the closer "The Catalyst" are my favourite, while I have to say that the heavier tracks seems to lack of inventive as in the first albums.

The result is an average good album, nothing specially good or bad even if I quite like the closer that's in my opinion the only album's track that would deserve to be considered for a compilation.

So what to say? It's free like all the Senmuth's discography and it's not bad. Listening to it will cost you just the time of a download (and a google translation of the download page from Russian if you are not from that Country).

That's why my 2.5 stars are rounded to 3: at least one good track and nothing to loose about the rest.