Electronic outfit Death in Vegas have always been chameleon-like. During the 90s and early 2000s, when dance and indie briefly became symbiotic, they embraced it and sometimes overstepped the mark. 2002’s ‘Scorpio Rising’ brought the disparate and some might say irreconcilable worlds of Kenneth Anger and Liam Gallagher together for a dalliance with the pop charts that looks increasingly naff with every passing year, and so it’s perhaps unsurprising that even as the latter prepares to play the most hyped gigs of a generation, his nibs has been left off the promotional bumf altogether.
It’s also unsurprising, given that ambient music has never been so popular, that ‘Chingola’, the opening track on Death Mask, is awash with slow, churning synthesisers drenched in feedback. Nevertheless, times change, and Death In Vegas have every right to adapt. The years in which they emerged were not serious times, but these are. Co-founder Richard Fearless stands alone now, and this, the project’s first record in nine years, reflects just how serious.
One assumes it’s been a tough decade, given that Death Mask is largely made up of bleak techno tracks with lashings of dub, bringing an atmospheric patina to otherwise intense, flat terrain. ‘Lovers’ is not infused with amatory waves of eroticism, but is rather more like lovers you might find fighting in the street who’ll then turn on whomever is foolhardy enough to try to break them up. ‘While My Machines Gently Weep’ is even more desolate but no less determined, and ‘Hazel’, 145 bpm with what sounds like sheet metal flapping percussively in the background, is a proverbial joyride that might yet end up in a ball of flames. It’s raw, desperate stuff. There are no cute hooks or motifs like 1999’s ‘Dirge’. No drawling, preening frontmen hoping against hope to turn into Mick Jagger.
Fearless cites TM404 and Hieroglyphic Being as influences on the new record, and you can certainly hear the former on ‘Róisín Dub’ and the latter on ‘Robin’s Ghost’, though the main source of Death Mask appears to be more personal and profound. The aforementioned ‘Chingola’ represents his own birth in Zambia, while the title track pertains to his father’s funeral. Intriguingly, that final track is filled with acceptance and perhaps conveys the most hope, with swathes of psychedelic organ and paroxysms of peripatetic percussion accompanying the clattering drum machine underneath. Someway through the track takes off and transcendence takes over, a nod to the eternal. On Death Mask, Fearless lifts the lid on what lies beneath and exposes his true self in ways that he’s always been reluctant to entertain. Fearless honesty suits him.
