Lo-fi, ethereal songs are all the rage now (contrarian use of the word ‘rage’ fully intended.) They typically provide a soothing escape, a gentle melody with a metronomic rhythm meant to induce focus, calmness, relaxation and in many ways, nothing more simple than detachment from the overbearing pace and demands of everyday life.
Now, imagine a space where lo-fi beats were amplified through the lens of true industrial music. Think “Filth Pig” more than “One Fire.” Automatically, the instinct would be to say ‘well, that can’t possibly be lo-fi anymore.’
…
Enter Tayne, the ambitious three-piece industrial pop band from London, and their new album “Love.”
Getting it out of the way - there’s no one single thing on “Love” that is truly revolutionary. That’s not why the album is worthy of dissection, though. It is the synthesis of disparate elements, styles and formations heretofore thought to be incompatible, that make “Love” an experience unlike most every other offering out there.
To understand the album is to begin with its quietest element - the airy, immaterial vocal presentation of band leader Matthew Sutton. To take a minor liberty with a classic axiom, his performance is the calm within the storm. As much as his vocal lines on songs like “Cause /// Worthless” may be the quietest element, they are the linchpin that sets the pace for the entire surrounding experience.
This is where the lo-fi part of the conversation comes in. Since Sutton delivers such an intentionally muted performance, it forces the music to conform to the timbre that he sets. The cacophony around him is something of a dangerous, violent, but ultimately chained animal, bound to him, rising and falling as he rises and falls. It’s not until the end of “Cause /// Worthless” that the music is allowed off the leash, and not until Sutton is done making his statement. The end result, album-wide, is a sense of a temperate beat, even if the sounds which compose that beat are destructive in the extreme (and they are.)
Now, when the band takes the intensity up to their maximum, they’re as capable as any in the business of bringing the house down. The song “Scars” seems to exist almost exclusively to prove this point. For those who were weaned on the heady days of Ministry or KMFDM or Nine Inch Nails or the Kidneythieves, you’ll feel right at home with “Scars” which is an explosive, heavily distorted touchstone to the traditional elements of industrial.
Down at the end and worthy of mention, “In This Trend” is the closest that Tayne gets to a metal/industrial hybrid, and by itself wouldn’t mean all that much, but in contrast to what has come before, makes for a pleasant variety right as the album starts to tail off.
Directing attention for a moment to the album’s second cut, “Down.” These might be words that have never been put in conjunction before - the song is something of an industrial shoegaze pop song. As confusing and foreign as that may sound, listen for yourself - it’s the only apt description. It is also, perhaps not coincidentally, the best cut on the record.
Is “Love” the kind of album that will enter a listener’s heavy rotation? Likely not. The collision of elements, heavy and soft, melodic and discordant, in some ways make “Love” more academically intriguing than accessible in a common sense. It doesn’t quite fit the motif of mundane tasks like ‘need to pick up milk and butter,’ but also doesn’t have the dominating persistence to match activities like ‘need to do 270 push-ups in the next five minutes.’ However! It is an experience unique unto itself, a demonstration that Tayne is a group of musicians who understand what they’re capable of, and have mastered the story they’re trying to tell. That alone makes it worthy both of the time to listen, and the celebration of the artists who chose to make it.
