A Journey That Challenges As Much As It Soothes

With the evocative combination of electronic and orchestral, Andres Costureras has delivered a new album that takes you on a guided escape into the forest.

An evocative and commanding sound emerges from Andrés Costureras, the visionary force behind Psychotic Beats. Delivering a commanding eight-track journey with Soundtrack Without a Movie. Costureras masterfully blends baroque pop, electronica and lush orchestral textures with striking vocals and eerie robotic sampling. Soundtrack Without A Movie is less a passive listen and more a guided escape - from the chaotic urban machine to the pure calm vision of the forest. With moments of dichotomy in the sounds that are often married together, the guided escape has ups and downs, you are lifted from the earth and planted back into it again, but this is what the journey is all about.

Following his cult Killing Eve anthem ‘Killer Shangri-La’, Costureras takes an unexpected turn with Soundtrack Without A Movie, 15 years since his ambitious triple album release on mental health, Soundtrack Without A Movie conveys a change in focus outward, confronting the noise of modern life and omnipresence of AI. With Bowie-esque, hauntingly vulnerable vocals, he weaves in humanity amongst the clash between machine and nature. Bringing every note back to the purity of the human voice.

“Technology is in the hands of evil people”, declares a powerful voice on the standout track ‘Silence’, setting the tone for the album's almost rage against the machine ideology. Layered strings and cavernous vocals push back against the eclectic and mechanised pulse of this track, evoking the feeling of being lifted out of the urban and into a clearing. Although the album’s use of statements such as this would suggest a rejection of the urban or machine, his marriage of both instrumental techniques defies this as black and white, creating a grey area where the synthetic and organic elements, the noise and stillness, city and forest feel almost inseparable.

This dichotomy is driven further by Costureras with sweeping strings woven through glitchy tectonic beats, throughout the album, often clashing before resolving in moments of harmony. He further uses tempo and volume masterfully - where moments build like a film score, while at other times he brings the sound back down to near silence, forcing the listener to lean in. This reminds us that the journey to the forest is not easy, the listening must be active, and ups and downs, twists and turns are to be expected.

Echoes of ‘Killier Shangri-La’ can be felt in the cinematic strings, with its place in a famous TV series centred on the relationship between a spy and psychotic assassin, in Soundtrack Without a Movie Costureras repurposes that spy-thriller energy for a more evocative and rare narrative. The balance between the orchestral drama and electronica is occasionally jarring, but this dissonance must be intentional - it is a part of this journey, of being lifted out, rather than a misstep.

Soundtrack Without a Movie is a rare kind of album, one that guides the listener through noise, disruption and unease toward a unique sense of calm. Costureras has created a work that is at once unsettling and deeply human, offering a cinematic, throughout-proving experience for anyone seeking music that challenges as much as it soothes.

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