French Canadian electronic duo
Essaie Pas
' second full-length for
DFA
is loosely based on
Philip K. Dick
's 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly, a dystopian science fiction classic themed around drug culture. Compared to the duo's previous effort, the excellent 2016 release
Demain Est une Autre Nuit
,
New Path
is darker, colder, less erotically charged, and more paranoid, befitting its subject matter. The duo largely step away from their pop side here -- nothing here is as playful as the previous album's French electro-chanson gem "Carcajou 3," nor even as direct as stark minimal-wave tracks like "Retox." Instead, most of the tracks are tense excursions into deep space techno. "Les Aphides" opens the album with nervous minimal throbbing, and the voices of
Marie Davidson
and
Pierre Guerineau
are largely obscured beneath the shifting echo and crumbling distortion. "Future Parle" is a suspenseful dance track with a prominent bassline, straightforward kick drum, and
Davidson
's signature deadpan French monologue. "Complet Brouille" is relatively light, beginning with
's laughter and featuring a poppy, bubbly yet industrial rhythm, but the track's sudden bursts of glitch-noise and fragmentary lyrics like "I don't expect to live long" and "Don't ever try to change me" add a biting, sinister twist. From there, the album blasts off, abandoning lyrics and jetting straight into an adrenaline rush of fast beats and percolating arpeggios. It all comes crashing down with "New Path," an ominous drone laced with disturbing conversational snippets delivered in a HAL-like robotic voice.
is perhaps the most challenging release yet from the already confrontational duo, and while it's not as accessible as
Demain
, it's still rewarding and often exciting. ~ Paul Simpson