V

Chiles Follakzoid started out making hypnotic, stretched-out songs influenced by space rock and Krautrock, then began working with Atom™ (Uwe Schmidt), who helped push their sound in a more techno-influenced direction. After guitarist Domingae branched out with a more abstract, dystopian electronic record that deconstructed the sound of the human voice, Follakzoid returned with V. Much like the creation process behind 2019s I, the band recorded dozens of isolated stems of guitar, bass, drum, synthesizer, and vocal parts, and handed them off to Schmidt to use as building blocks for the songs. The results, unsurprisingly, arent very different from the groups previous album. If anything, Schmidt has reduced the bands sound even further, making them sound colder, more robotic, and less like a rock group than before. The tracks all consist of an unchanging metronomic thump and layers of atmospheric synths and levitating guitars, sometimes twisted, delayed, and rhythmically stuttered, but in less of a dubwise manner than I. That album also seemed a bit heavier on bass than this one, making it a bit more club-friendly, though this one is just as easy for a DJ to mix into a set. While there arent any moments that break free from the grid, "V-II" seems to swell up halfway through, with heavier drumming and a thicker swirl of effects, before a feed of words in Spanish becomes chopped up beyond comprehension and dissolved into acid. The words are submerged behind the undertow of "V-III," then return to the forefront during "V-IIII," which seems mixed with a DJs sense of pacing more than the other tracks. V is definitely a "more of the same" album, but Follakzoid and Schmidts human-machine fusion of minimal techno and space rock is still a unique sound that nobody has replicated, other than them. ~ Paul Simpson