Futile Escapist Front – Lost Transmissions.

Futile Escapist Front – Lost Transmissions – CD – 2021 – Sonic Entrails – FEF

https://sonicentrails.bandcamp.com/album/futile-escapist-front-lost-transmissions

https://sonicentrails.bandcamp.com/

https://en-gb.facebook.com/sonicentrails/

     Hope.

       1.       Truth.

       2.       Feeling.

       3.       Salvation

     Despair.

      4.       Revelation.

      5.       Choice.

      6.       Damnation Now!

I engaged with this recording straight away; it is a new recording by John E Smoke. This makes me remember people’s feelings of how things were at the time of Covid and the lockdown, Lost Transmissions immediately radiates me towards that. The label has heavily dealt with these times previously on the amazing Something Broke album. This is also the first of two recordings by this new Flesh-Eating Foundation linked project.

It gives off a churning, dystopian ambient aura immediately, everything functions within a thick fog of paranoia, feeling like a slow exploration of a mindscape and its past. I use this word a lot, but infected comes through the work, drones mingle causing subtle interactions and low build ups, vocal samples emerge at different times as if reporting from the past and making it into the present.

At different intervals, synthesisers play over the work, often repeated patterns, but are very effective, giving an adrenaline rush to the work – a quickening. In contrast to this the keyboards also slow things back down with soundtrack like overtones, even bordering on classical in parts. Rumbling distortion and tone feedback resonate across the work, like a lead vocal singing its song. All of these components build a massive sound.

I want to say Science fiction when I hear Lost Transmission, but it isn’t fiction, it feels like the exploration of the mind through past recordings and samples. This is basically a brilliant, well executed album.

Army of One 2022.