I’m not sure how to accurately describe Scattered Purgatory‘s new album, Post Purgatory, but I’m also not sure it’s possible. The Taipei duo blend multiple genres well: Trip-hop, industrial, motorik, synthwave, a bit of goth. The cover looks like an upside-down photo of a flooded underpass with a city (Taipei?) in the background. The world was turned upside-down for the band during the pandemic, and they emerged from it, like all of us, a bit puzzled by how time and space worked and what was certain. Human relationships and airy expanses craved during isolation now felt kind of weird. Time felt like “it can heal or it can destroy,” as they mention in the notes for the album.
“Atata Naraka” has wild tenor saxophone (courtesy of Minyen Hsieh) that blasts like its being played in that flooded underpass while you cruise over the floodwaters in a sleek Miami Vice-era boat. The thick bass and fuzzy guitar chords of “Wunai” sound like the set-up to a seduction sequence in a vampire thriller.
“Ephemeral Mind” is a good name for a good track that describes how most of the world felt during and after the pandemic. Our minds, preoccupied with distractions before the pandemic, and calmness of mind, became ephemeral to our doom-scrolling. Emerging from our cocoons made some of us realize we need to put the phone down, while others rushed to fill the silence of the world and our heads with even more distractions. The 1980s goth guitar chords on it are damn cool.
“Thundering Dream” is heavy with low bass and synth stabs that sound like they’re played by robots underwater. dotzio‘s guest vocals on “Moonquake” create a gorgeous trip-hop / chillwave track that you’ll probably put on romantic playlists all year. “Above the Clouds” has heavy metal guitar chords combined with soft vocal sounds and tripped-out synths to make something unpredictable…as is the short “KL20,” which is like Blade Runner background music.
“Ocean City, Mirage Tower” would also fit into a science fiction film as the lead character slurps noodles in a tiny place off a neon-lit alley waiting for robot bounty hunters to show up and ruin everything. It floats along like lotus petal along the rain-filled underpass, drifting from synthwave to dark funk to cinematic piano paranoia.
Time is weird. Scattered Purgatory figured this out years ago and made an album that has a title symbolizing multiple things: Emerging from the weird time of the pandemic (which felt like purgatory for many), becoming new versions of themselves (Post “Scattered” Purgatory), no longer dwelling on the past, mistakes, and regrets (essentially what purgatory is).
Time constantly happens, and yet it doesn’t. No is one really sure what the hell it is. It heals all wounds and also withers away everything. Now is the only part of it that exists. I’m writing this in my present and in your past. You’re reading it in my future and your present. All of those things are now, like this record.
Keep your mind open.
[Don’t leave the subscription box in purgatory.]
[Thanks to Kate at Stereo Sanctity.]