Pick

Ezekiel Honig Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band

• Words: Walter Wasacz
• Label: Anticipate
• XLR8R Rating: 7.5/10

Ezekiel Honig’s second full-length solo release on his own Anticipate imprint is more confident, accomplished, and, best of all, darker and sadder than 2003’s melancholy ambient techno dub Technology Is Lonely. Honig sets the mood just right on the monochromatic “Porchside Prologue,” then bounces into a murky shuffle on both “Broken Marching Band” and “A Brief Visual Pattern.” On each track, he uses field recordings and studio effects, a progression of ascending synth chords and a surprisingly robust bassline to create strangely solemn narratives that leave you believing–like in a great film by Hitchcock or Lynch–that there are fewer things more compelling than mysteries contained in the human heart.