Chasms - The Mirage [Felte 057]

Released on February 22nd, 2k19 via the Felte-label is "The Mirage", the sophomore album outing of Chasms, a musical collaboration of Jess Labrador and Shannon Madden. Following a tumultous and sad period in the lives of the duo we see them coming to terms with happenings of the past over the course of seven brand new tracks plus the original version and a rework of their most recent single "Divine Illusion" featured on this longplayer. Opening with the 7 minutes spanning cut "Shadow" we see Chasms paving the way for things to come, a journey into deep, slightly balearic and heavily Dub-infused Leftfield Pop built on a foundation of mostly ethereal, echo-heavy voices, stripped down rhythm signatures and raw, warm, organic bass works appealing to Indie- and DreamPop-lovers as well as to Shoegaze-fans, Massive Attack-headz and those who've been digging Paul Oakenfold's many a 'Perfecto' remixes of classic Pop cuts released throughout the first half of the 90s as well as to followers of more contemporary band outfits like Peaking Lights. This said, it should be pretty clear where the main target audience of Chasms might be at, yet we presume that even die-hard followers of the mentioned genres might not be necessarily impressed as, considering the full runtime of 50 minutes, there's not much variation delivered and, despite changing tempo ranges, it feels like the first three or four tracks fully define what the band has to offer musically and what follows represents only miniscule variations of what seems to be a pretty much formulaic approach to songwriting and aesthetics with the shoegazing, distorted guitar riffs in the intro of the title track seemingly being the only element that sticking out for a reason. Maybe a four track EP would've been enough?

Album artwork on Instagram!