Ten Tracks In Search Of A Melody

I am sorry. I have tried, I really have to make this review objective but I challenge you all to listen to the dire new album 'Adieu Or Die' from Spanish electro artist Aries without suffering a similar lapse in politeness.

Aries is Isabel Fernandez Reviriego. She enthusiastically states that "every synthesiser, every melody, every beat… is my own." I can only suggest that next time she avails herself of a little help.

It really is downhill all the way from the opening track 'Lagrimas I' where plinky-plonky beats and infantile singing sound like the introduction to a terrible childrens show.

The music is utterly simplistic, as if it was composed on a Stylophone. There is no flow but no sense of a discernible underlying rhythm either. Aries throws a different weird electronic noise at the start of each track and spends the rest of the time jumbling random bits of synths together without obvious regard for tune or melody. Her vocal reminded me of nails scratching on glass.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. But I like development and harmony, shades and shifts in my music, not this risible dross.
To cap the experience, where there is 'Lagrimas I' there must follow 'Lagrimas II' as the children's nightmare theme tune reappears in track nine.

Finally Aries repeats the same turgid bars over and over again for what feels like decades in the closing title track. We breathe a huge sigh of relief when what sounds like an explosion finishes this and she sinks gently beneath the waves.

The final track lasts 11 minutes. The other tracks just feel as if they do.

This album is really, really bad.

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