For the most part, Six Archetypes is a collection of dreary soundscapes with industrial and synthpop inflections. Soho Rezanejad is a producer, singer, and songwriter from the school of boring study-core ambient. Alongside pop-classical, this format of music only sees the light of day in late spring and mid-winter, the two exam seasons.
And for good reason. The music has none of the microtonality, polyrhythmic hypnosis or beautiful tension building and resolving melodies that make good ambient music able to be focused on without sleeping. On top of these bland soundscape interludes – ones which don’t fit each other at all – the album’s best tracks employ the cardinal sin of 80s revivalism: grossly sweet synth textures.
These tracks do shine compositionally, however. ‘Reptile’ is a good industrial-krauty-synthpop track with ambient influences; ‘Greed Wears a Disarming Face’ is probably the best track, with a more composed and thought-out melodic progression whilst retaining the rhythmic droning and the ambiance; ‘December Song’ draws inspiration from the ambient soundscapes of late 90s Nine Inch Nails, without being as good.
Most of the tracks come across as interludes, hence ‘Intermezzo’ is actually above average by its standards; this LP wishes it were made by someone as masterful as Trent Reznor or the Cocteau Twins, but in spite of reality it has some promise.
[Tess Dawson]
qmunicatemagazine.com 