Bloodthirsty – Symbion Project (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I always feel that if music causes us broken down scribblers to start inventing new musical labels and generic pigeonholes just to try to explain where it fits in to the grand scheme of things, the plan that only the Gods of Music truly understand, then it is just doing its job. And if this is indeed the case, then Symbion Project should be in line for a promotion. Whilst it is easy to see what many of the building blocks are; new romantic drama, chilled avant-pop, neo classical electronica and an element of suspense, what it all adds up to is not quite so easy to pin down. But that’s fine; creativity is more about asking questions than providing answers anyway.

The music seems, on the first few listens at least, to be drifting and free form, although it is actually more focused and defined than that, and it is this minimalist and cinematic approach which puts it in a similar musical ball park to the likes of Bowie’s exotically esoteric Berlin years or Japan’s icy detachment. For all its apparent dark and melancholic first impressions, those shadowy musical structures seem only to exist to frame the space in between them, the atmosphere and the anticipation, the gaps between the haunting vocals and the moments when the music exists only as a fading echo.

Even with the fact that we had a whole generation of post-punks exploring this sort of sonic territory, Bloodthirsty still feels like music out of time or context, that it is somehow seeking to write its own musical history, separate from the accepted one. Why not, it is what all the most exciting musicians have always done.