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In a world where everything and everyone is accessible at all times it’s refreshing to find an artist working off the map.
Invisible Elephant is the work of one anonymous man and a range of random, cobbled together instruments.
Fuse this with synthesisers, dreamy vocals and found sounds and you have a vast landscape of melodies and genres that can not be pinned down, and is very much a unique design.
The nine track album, Anomie Or Swimming In A Black Sea, leads the listener through these man-made soundscapes.
First track Commercial Appeal is one of four tracks that are less than two minutes in length. Child sounds are mixed in with keyboard to create an airy and sinister vibe, and then as quickly as it started it fades away.
Wish features the guest vocalist Ryli and is a slow paced haunting affair. The gentle guitar melody is complimented by multi layered vocals that intensify during the track.
In Do You Believe? Invisible Elephant possibly have their strongest track. Another multi-layered affair, this time switching between keyboards and guitar while vocals whisper somewhere in the distance.
Listening to the album is like plugging in to punk, folk-rock, psychedelic rock and lo-fi all at once, while at the same time it’s like nothing before it.
There is melancholic theme that runs through the nine tracks, reflecting upon our troubled times of riots, natural disasters and recessions.
The only flaw with the album are the shorter tracks, which feel more like fillers between the real tracks and give the album an EP feel, with fillers between the stronger tracks.
Anomie is a well structured, clever offering. It plays with genres and convention, re-forming and re-shaping until it generates an ambient prog trip, which is futuristic and familiar all at once and a showcase of how independant recording should be done.