Wraetlic

Glaswegian producer Alex Smoke makes his debut as Wraetlic with a self-titled record driven by heavily burdened vocals and melodic melancholia. Wraetlic features Smoke's processed vocals on the majority of the record, and while much of the lyrical content is rather difficult to make out, the phrases that do stand out openly echo the sentiment of societal disconnect between the individual and his/her relationships with the world, which Smoke is attempting to convey. The contrasting sounds on many of the album's tracks (notably "PintleGrist") balance longing melodies of soft pad work with aggressive electronic squelches, creating an intensely emotive experience that's directed more ethereally at the listener, as opposed to via literal meanings of Smoke's synthetic ramblings. In depressive irony, "Refrain" even samples words spoken by G.W. Bush in 2003 calling for peace, when the U.S. had already mobilized for the war in Iraq. Wraetlic is a dark record, delicately assembled to provide the listener with an experience in humanistic truth, a subject in which Smoke has succeeded quite well in outlining.