What I've Been Listening To #3 - Fragments of Reality

This is What I've Been Listening To: an unimaginatively named weekly-ish post about whatever music I'm currently listening to and/or obsessed with. This post is about the song Fragments of Reality by Cosmo Vitelli feat. Fantastic Twins.

When I first heard this piece of music I was immediately reminded of Freak, Go Home, my favorite track off the album Psychic by psychedelic duo DARKSIDE. The volatile synthesizers that form the backbone of each song are strikingly similar, and both evoke the same nocturnal mood. But where Freak, Go Home is trimmed with black light fluorescence, Fragments of Reality opts to sit in pure darkness.

There is a palpable menace in the air of this track. It's the tension of a slasher movie, but unclear whether we are the one nervously looking over our shoulder or the monster itself lurking in the shadows. The vocals are hollow and cold as if from the perspective of an indifferent narrator, or the thousand-yard-staring investigator surveying this movie's grim aftermath. If that all sounds drab and gloomy don't worry - it's not that at all! It's dark but high-energy and fun, sort of gothy.

The track is propelled by a starkly metronomic dance beat. A miasma of drone perpetually approaches at an uncomfortable middle distance amidst a cavelike soundscape of percussive drips. Midway through a klaxon of synth pitch-sweeps into the song - the monster's face is revealed - adrenaline rushes as time slows down. After a brief chase scene reaches its foregone conclusion the film tastefully cuts away - the stone-faced narrator delivers an epilogue. Fade to black.