Dark Matter [LP]

Vinyl LP pressing. As in an absence of light, an unseen weight that smothers us all. Dark Matter, the 2015 album from SPC ECO (pronounced Space Echo) is a bold new direction for the band, a series of torch songs for people with ice in their hearts, bleak and sparse like the seconds before you jump. The brainchild of Dean Garcia (formerly of Curve), this may be the most brilliant thing yet from a man who's spent a lifetime sculpting sound. Every bass note is like a bomb going off in your chest. SPC ECO knows: when life hands you lemons, make hand grenades. Singer Rose Berlin croons and aches, endless laments dreaming to be heard. This is a singer who knows that the battle against gravity is the one you'll never win. 'Creep In The Shadows' is the sound of someone with their face pressed against the glass as they hurtle through space running out of air-the end of the world as seen from a distance. With its liquid rhythms, 'Down Low' could fit seamlessly onto a contemporary hip-hop station. Listen on headphones or your ears will never forgive you. And then there's 'Under My Skin'. Simultaneously elegiac and valedictory, a song to be played at weddings and funerals, graduations and suicides-as if there's a difference.