Edber - How To Be Gentle At Skullfucking

Edber is a solo artist from Tutin, Serbia. His works combine dream pop, lo-fi, shoegaze, post-rock, synth rock and drone. His debut, How To Be Gentle At Skullfucking, is an extremely poignant and inspiring start to his career, albeit being far too overstuffed.

There are some truly remarkable songs on How To Be Gentle At Skullfucking. Be My Cadaver, Baby is an excellent shoegaze pop single in vein of MBV, while also cultivating its own personality in the domain of synth-pop. While completely unexpected and innovatively extravagant, Mother Alma’s Pistol Whippin’ Attanement (ft. MC Goveddi) gives much need charisma to the tracklisting. Midnight Wanderlust boasts an exceptional atmosphere, fueled by a charismatic saxophone, and is overall a great complement to preceeding tracks. Songs such as Hey! Firewitch! And Gateway of Inception are carried by their strong vibes, despite their basic chord progressions/riffs. On the contrary, Huffing Paint Before Armageddon has some creative song writing, heightened by an exquisite placement of acoustics. Edber works best when blending the domain of acoustics and synthetic soundscapes. The closer, Witchcraft In Her Lips, also does this quite admirably.

The album would have exceeded and been easy to recommend had it only been composed of the strongest tracks mentioned above, though much of the album tends to waffle in its aesthetically-pleasing yet poorly-structured soundscapes. The overall experience is marred by generic sludge metal pieces, such as Intrauterine Harakiri and The Walls Have Eyes. As captivating as the drone is, it doesn’t offer any fresh ideas compared to the artists that inspired it. The exceptions are clearly distinguished by their creative blends with other genres, such as during Hair Full of Roses/Flesh Full of Thorns, which is gorgeously cryptic and incorporates elements of doomsday metal and enigmatic shoegaze. Other times the songs rock their aesthetic quite admirably, but the songwriting is painfully plain or amateurish, such as during Amphetamine Caix and its repetitive non-progressive arp, or Flashback Plaguebearer with its sloppy execution. Lastly, as with most vapourwave based tracks, it tends to sound a little self-indulgent and over-reliant on its aesthetic, such as during the otherwise iridescent Running With Scissors.

At its best, How To Be Gentle At Skullfucking is incredibly captivating and absorbing, though it suffers greatly from quality control. One cannot emphasise enough how strong the strongest tracks are – hopefully in future Edber will be able to discern them from the filler. Even with the fat entact, there’s enough meat to recommend at least one sit-through. It’s certainly flawed, but How To Be Gentle At Skullfucking is a promising debut.

Good

Listen to it here:

https://edber.bandcamp.com/album/how-to-be-gentle-at-skullfucking

Edber - How To Be Gentle At Skullfucking