Sin Destino

Freezing out the heat-seeking Miami scene with his cold minimal synth for the past decade, Ramiro Jeancarlo (1/2 of the industrial outfit Opus Finis) offers up 10 tracks of analogue darkness. Sung in both English and Spanish, the forthcoming album is informed by Jeancarlo’s half Chilean, half Venezuelan background. Pervasive throughout the LP is an aura of dread and claustrophobia that without a doubt evokes the brutally hot, dry, lonely landscape of suburban South Florida.

But beyond the dismal swamplands, it's possible to detect the mournful ambiance of cultures plagued for centuries by colonization, civil war and political turmoil. Whether Jeancarlo means to offer "Salvation Through Suffering" as an alternative to everything from Catholicism to revolutions-turned-tyrannies is not explicit, but the distinctive mood of dread conjures something more monolithic than plain nihilism.

Therein lies the fascinating duality: "Lost Image" could as easily land in a soundtrack to a film about a lonesome teen in desolate suburbia as it could a film about Pinochet's Caravan of Death. Despite the disorienting feeling of so much of the album, Staccato's own coup d'état comes in the moments of resolution where warm melodies and nearly psychedelic soundscapes counter the bleakness. On “Desespero,” Jeancarlo’s pleas to “let me in, I want in” are frighteningly forward but made inviting against a danceable and very accessible synthpop background. The instrumental “En Sueños” has a sweetly bright melody atop sinister beats that plumb the depths, while the synthesizers in “Happy Endings” happily climb into major dimensions as the signature darkness shines through.

Staccato du Mal’s music is rich with sonic feeling that makes for infinitely rewarding listening. Working within the confines of the minimal synth genre, Jeancarlo manages to include el.......
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