Album Reviews

I don't know what "defo" is, but judging by this record, life after it is achingly melancholic. Actually after writing that I did a web search and learned that "defo" means something like "certainty". So who can argue that life after certainty would leave you anything but melancholic or worse?

Deptford Goth is not a group. It's one guy: a Brit named Daniel Woolhouse who clearly wishes to fill your head with dreamy, floating sadness and make it sound really, really good in the process. Think maybe an even more soothing and/or depressed and/or contemplative version of Sigur Rós minus the invented language and falsetto or James Blake minus the insistent beats.

A publicist sent the vinyl and I sat down and gave it a shot. I was immediately transported into Mr. Woolhouse's musical bluff where the warm wind rushes in from the ocean expanse, gently brushes your cheeks and says "why get over it when you can wallow in such comfortable misery?"

Unfortunately there's no lyric sheet so it's going to be a while before I can decipher all or any of the lyrics. Each time I vow to pick out the words I'm distracted by Woolhouse's glorious ear-candy. I did pick up one song where he sings "I belong with everyone I've ever known" but apparently he's stuck in his bedroom or kitchen or living room creating this stuff on a synthesizer so he can't be with them.

Woolhouse knows how to create gorgeous atmospherics, melodies that stick, tug at your heart and create glowing warmth. He sings in a wispy, croaky, sincere voice that is never cloying or pathetic. He's repetitive but not annoyingly so. You don't feel sorry for him. You just feel inspired and calmed.

How does he do it? He starts with a really deep but gentle, insistent bass line on many tracks: a soft, tacky deep one that lingers and is never overdone. He adds bell-toned fills, doubling for support the vocal melody. He sprinkles the surface with delicate tinkly accents. He leaves plenty of empty space to produce some desolation and he bathes it all in the perfect amount of reverb that helps produce a really wide and deep soundstage but not with so much reverb that the image body is diluted. It's mixed damn tastefully too.

The first play of this record stopped me in my tracks. Musically and sonically it demonstrates the inviting warmth good taste can create on usually cold and off-putting synthesizers. It's hypnotic musically and sonically. Woolhouse makes his artificial soundscape sound real. As real as the lonely yet inspired and somehow uplifting music he's created here.

I found the mastering engineer Greg Moore on Linkedin and asked about the vinyl. He told me it was cut from the 24 bit file, which of course had to be decimated to 16 bits for the CD. He also said the idea was to keep the dynamics wide and the bass deep. MIssion accomplished. If your system does deep bass, you'll quickly become addicted to the electronic bass. You get the CD with the LP so judge for yourself. Whatever Mr. Woolhouse's melancholy, he put a "smiley face" on the CD silkscreening.

The GZ Czech Republic pressing was decent. It sounded better than my copy looked, which was like someone took an orbital sander to side one's surface. Fortunately whatever it was didn't penetrate the grooves!

Put this one on late at night and I promise, promise you a really good, if somewhat heartbreakingly good time. Mr. Woolhouse knows how to orchestrate emotions as well as he does his electronic musical palette. This record is a minor miracle not to be missed.