Written by: ZRG
Country: 
Artist
Label: Cathedral Music
Genre: Noise/Techno /Ambient /IDM /Industrial / Electro
01 Intro
02 Brapstar
03 Invocations
04 Brewed
05 Charly
06 The Ballroom
07 Quasar
08 Supericed
09 Sleeper
10 Valentine
11 Wet Dreams
12 Dragon
13 In The Gutter
14 Black Mass
15 Redux
16 Undown
17 Outsider
18 Voodoo Throbb
19 Waxer
20 Intruder
This untitled album by BenadDicted is the first proper release by this German electronic project. There are a potentially daunting 20 track album by Benjamin Siebert aka BenadDicted. Siebert is also known for his remastering skills, particularly through the label Malaise Music.
Intro begins with keyboards, field recordings and samples working around each other to create a haunted futuristic ambience that immediately ties the album together as a theme to the album’s abstract qualities. Brapster allows a restrained tribal electro beat that is slowly unleashed to work in conjunction with a very 80’s synth workout. This is held in modern day by the progression of the beat works through electro and industrial before its finale. Invocations then pulls back to ambient sound territory and vintage sounds crackle away to build tension. Charly allows BenadDicteds beat skills to shine through, the track is dominated by ultra fast electro beats and also allowing for a run of tracks that allow a dominant beat.
The beat prominence allows for the ambient skills to be overlaid upon lively beats and both rest perfectly upon each other. It is as if the soundscape/ambient work could work well without the rhythm but they also combine very well together. Undown is a futuristic sample explosion working around a powerful dance beat, Voodoo Throb – works a distorted pulsing and dark ambient qualities.
Overall BenadDicted works as an excellent soundtrack to the inner city of modern and future life. There are excellent skills of restraint, build up and release throughout this album. Synth work is particularly impressive, in parts nods are made to artists like as Vangelis or Jean Michel Jarre through the ambient and soundtrack qualities to the album. This album does skip across genres and fuse them, yet manages to hold together as a whole album well and not just be a portfolio of different tracks. I would like to see BenadDicted’s skills homed across just a few tracks that are worked on in even more fine detail as an album.
Rating: 4/5
