The Belgian Eric Manchiniste (music/vox) and Lukk (vox/lyrics) form the line-up of the project DI*ove, rightly appreciated for its formidable art of combining the basic principles of the Electronic Body Music with the pleasantness and the aesthetics of dark-electro/synthpop. The inclination for the artificial sound was a prerogative of Eric since the early 90’s, the period during which the protagonist tried with other two members a sort of home-made experiment, forming with them the Escape Industry, band through which he recorded and spread a demo highly acclaimed at that time before the final dissolution of the platform occurred in 1999. With determination, Eric moved the next step by the minimal-electro solo-project called Evoid, and more specifically by three self-produced mini-CDs released between 2000 and 2004, until in 2006 the cooperation with the newly-entered Luc increased significantly the sonic database Sonic completed with 80’s elements, leading the two musicians to the formation into the today’s today’s DI*ove. Officially, the record products attributed to the project are dated back to 2009 through the digital-EP “Evoid Becomes DI*ove”, licensed by the Belgian net-label Knovel Records, within which tracklist, consisting in five electro-experimental songs, they spire two creations conceived in the early operating periods, “Haunting Me” and “I Want A Bear”. In 2010 it was published the self-released EP “DI*verge”, which tracklist includes six industrial/electro episodes mastered by Kevin Jaspar, aka A.L.F. militant into the noise/breakcore duo known as E25 Corporate. After three years spent as live-supporters and undertaking partnerships for remixed versions, the DI*ove return gloriously in 2013 signing the agreement with the label EK Product and releasing this debut-album full of expectations available in digipak format, DI*ode”.” Its tracklist, consisting in nine songs, opens with the atmospheric expansions of “Understöen”, propagated until they reach the hypnotic midtempo circuit of the drum-programming which beats support the alienation expressed by the singer’s voice and by the complexity of electronic textures, while the subsequent “Mayday” alternates dark-electro/industrial sonorities building them on an accelerated implant of sequencing and drumming, which pulsing bass-lines codify a rhythmical punctuation to dance with emphasis scanned between the synth, the loops, and united with the enthralling vocal metric of Eric.
“ADT” is enhanced by the singing sections processed by Lady Funk, who combines her sensual vocalizations with the more pronounced ones belonging to Eric, all this into an electro midtempo track with vague EBM’s recalls, where the combined action among the programmig, the percussive apparatus, and the suggestive key’s breaths, triggers dynamic sounds recalling darkness and torment. “Gaze” is a gritty interaction between EBM strategies and others ingrained into the dark-synthpop with a particular attention turned towards the dance, points highlighted in the cyclical and powerful intermittences of drum-programming spurred into midtempo mode, simultaneously to inciting vocals and cold key’s radiations. The following “Addictions” slows down the percussiveness subdividing it in precise percussive drum-beats next to which there are aligned the hallucinatory tones by Claus Kruse, owner of the EBM/electro-industrial solo-project known as Plastic Noise Experience, who sings harshly om the obsessive sequencing replications. The vocalist Mad Woowoo participates actively in the song “What The Fuck!”, exposing in it the constructs pronounced in French language intercalated with those of the singer: the result is a male-fema le vocal plan, refined and at the same time neurasthenic, admirably adapted to the EBM’s dance modulations. “Clinically Dead” propagates acidic synth melodies, dissatisfied and cynical vocals, dictated with inflexibility on the drumming’s dryness which uptempo lashing, together with the iciness of programming, pulling a dark electro-EBM song ideal for the avant-garde D.J.’s, as well as the subsequent “I Need More”, another great midtempo device for the alternative dance floors, diffuses vocals saturated of tension and pneumatic keyboard/sequencer’s evolutions included into a metronomic drum-system, all this creating a dark-electro/synthpop vaguely 80’s. In the last track of the release, “Never!” they prevail the midtempo’s distorted and snappy timbres of the drum-programming and the exciting vocal emissions by both two components, sonorities intoxicated by the key’s strokes and by caustic sketches of synthetic material.
The intent of the talented DI*ove is to give movement to modern technological music concepts, inside of which it must be necessarily perceived the presence of sounds belonging to the electronic rearguard, mission fully successful in “DI*ode”, a debut album that reveals a concentration of acoustics proposable both to the direct listening as well as opportunities for dancing until complete exhaustion. Electro-urticant propulsions, vibrant EBM dynamism, atmospheres darkened by threatening nebulae, vocals that wound by their subtle sharpness: This is simply class.
Maxymox 2013 – Link