DANIEL TOMPKINS

Castles KSCOPE

Atmosphere and remix experiments for TesseracT man’s first solo LP.

Billed as the first solo album from the TesseracT frontman, in some senses Castles is more like his third. Leading his pop side-project White Moth, Black Butterfly, Tompkins already has two albums under his belt, and he’s no stranger to electronic experimentation thanks to his work in Zeta with Paul Ortiz, formerly of Chimp Spanner.

It’s no secret that Tompkins is a fan of art rock bands like A Perfect Circle and Deftones, and you’d expect his solo work to draw inspiration from these melodic yet cerebral artists. Instead, Castles comes from a slightly different place – Chino Moreno’s trip-hop side project Team Sleep. It also sounds a lot like some TesseracT tracks; the middle eight of Castles, one of the most Team Sleep-like cuts, has a lot in common sonically with Orbital from the last TesseracT album Sonder.

The trip-hop thread is the most consistent thing about the album, though there are some deviations from that with Cinders and Black The Sun, which have a strong art metal vibe. They’re necessary for some dynamic variation and as palate cleansers, but the most interesting and unique tracks are elsewhere. Kiss, with its maximalist synths and heavy-hitting drums, is more contemporary, and perhaps more of its own thing than a lot of the other tracks, and the pulsing flow of the bass synth parts is compelling. A similar thing can be said of Limitless, once it gets going. The rhythms are punchy and straightforward, ceding centre-stage to the aggressive synth and giving Tompkins’ vocal something clear to play off.

The album comes with six remixes. Producer Head’s rework of Black The Sun throws an interesting spin on the guitar parts, but ultimately ends up less compelling than the original. Randy Slaugh’s version of Kiss is a radical, organic and percussive take on the song, definitely adding something, even if the original is probably better. It’s the remixes of opener Saved that really bite, with Tompkins’ TesseracT bandmate Acle Kahney giving it a melodic makeover, while Paul Ortiz’s version is a straight-up synthwave banger, complete with a bona-fide guitar solo and a tasty set of arpeggiated counterpoint parts on the outro.

Tompkins’ claim that this is his best work to date rings fairly true, for solo output. The only nag is that in trying to make a sparse and expansive record, sometimes melody is sacrificed at the altar of atmosphere, revealed by the denser Ortiz and Kahney remixes. Tompkins’ creative instincts have forged an excellent record, but perhaps his hesitation over collaborating on the main album have held back a stronger release – though at least they are included as bonus tracks.

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