Aphelion I-VI label: iris light released: 02.09.01 our score: 3.5 out of 5.0 buy it: here

Remember that goth girl/guy in your math class who you always just kind of noticed but were put off by the whole children of the night thing? Remember how you just kind of looked at her/him one day and realized that she/he was really incredibly hot after all?

Well, neither do I. That stuff doesn't happen in real life, and is extremely unlikely in music too. But that's the kind of thing we're talking about here. Aphelion is the electronic project of Stuart Anstis, who was a guitarist and songwriter for British black metal band Cradle of Filth for four years. That's right, Cradle of Filth, the same group who released such great albums as Dusk & Her Embrace and Vempire, or Dark Tales in Phallustein. And this is an instrumental electroproject by their ex-guitarist. It's got crap written all over it, right?

Wrong. In this case, just like in high school that one time, the goth chick/dude is beautiful. This is some fresh sort of darkcore music, alive with malice but not undanceable, clearly evil but cute as hell. No one is shrieking about how great Satan is, as far as I know; other than some nice female Arab ululation, there's nary a vocal to be found. What we get in the meantime are some punishing beats, some slammin' drum loops courtesy of Shawn Lee (check out how many hip-hop producers will be ripping off "VI" in 2003), and a surprising sense of melody within the laptop context. Shame about the 33-minute running time, but that's better than 73 minutes at this juncture.

It's not as brutal as it might sound, and it's a lot more pretty than it has the right to be. Spot on, Anstis, spot on. Let's hear more from your Aphelion.
02-Jan-2003 10:30 PM

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