Kevin Richard Martin - Sirens [Room40 Promo]

Scheduled for release via the Australian Room40-imprint is "Sirens", the first ever album on which Kevin Richard Martin, better known as The Bug, Ice, Razor X Productions or 50% of Techno Animal to many, uses his full name as an artistic alias, possibly due to the fact that the 14 cuts featured on this hour-long outing deal with a most personal time and development of the artists life, the thrill and excitement and changes of parenthood and the quite difficult circumstances that came with it. The album is split into two suites, each comprised of seven individual compositions in which Martin focuses on the atmospheric gravitas and spatial aspects of his previous works, minus the beats and ultra-heavy bass brutalism that is, and instead brings forth a previously unheard of sense of minimalism in his musical work, allowing only a few restrained, calm bass pulses to add the occasional rhythmical element to the compositions which border Cold / Isolationist Ambient and desolate, post-apocalyptic Field Recordings at times before we see a first, slightly melodic element appear in "Alarm", more than 20 minutes into the album and yet contrasted by ever spiralling, unsettling siren sounds. Following up, "Too Much" reveals the first signs of Kevin Richard Martin's brooding trademark bass sounds which once again re-appear in "Mechanical Chatter In The I.C.U.", the opening track of the albums second suite. But despite these few throwbacks to and echoes of the artists previous works throughout the decades, also to be found in the nearly 8 minutes spanning "Necrosis", the overall feel of desolation, isolation and emptiness remains the dominating factor on this longplayer and is, especially under the circumstances leading up to this album project, defo what one might expect from an Ambient album produced by Kev Martin. Yet only time will tell if this fragile musical approach will resonate with his more bass- and dancefloor-oriented fanbase built over the past years.