Enabl.ed - "Saccharine Morning"

Artist: Enabl.ed
Album: Saccharine Morning
Year: 2011
Label: Global Vortex
Genre: IDM, Glitch, Ambient
Website:

 

 

Basics:
Latest idm/glitch/ambient EP from the highly prolific Enabl.ed (aka Iameb 57). Similar to his other works, though somewhat of an improvement over early releases. 

Good stuff:
+ Same basic style: beautiful melodies and pads combined with spastic, complex rhythmic sections. Overall the stuff is kind of light and whimsical. His abilities are as strong as ever; he still provides interestingly bizarre melodies which are both pleasant and confusing, melded with mind bending flurries of clicky percussion. This EP definitely has some recognizable sounds, but in this case I'd say that these are becoming trademarks of his style rather than carbon copies of his other work.

+ Again, continuing with his MO, all the songs presented are rather short: clocking in at between two and four and a half minutes. I've complained about this quality previously, but I think he does a good job filling out all the songs this time around, and none of them sound like interludes or filler.

+ Atmosphere. While I don't think his tracks are hugely "atmospheric", I find that they do a good job of conveying a mood; that mood, in my opinion, is feeling like you are traveling through the dreams of a computer. That is, exploring the computer's somewhat skewed artificial representation of an organic land or cityscape, pieced together from myriad fragments of information.

+ Production is good. Not as good as the vinyl on lovethechaos, but better than older works.

Bad stuff:
- The only negative side to this is that if you have a decent amount of his material this will be nothing new. Just a continuation of what he has been doing for the last couple of years. He has a very specific style and does not deviate much, if at all, from it.

Summary:
A good place to get started with Enabl.ed. This will appeal to fans of cerebral, glitchy, melodic IDM. Though if you're fairly familiar with his work, than this may not offer much which is new or innovative.

Overall Rating: 7/10