“Perth-based four piece band perth released their second album ‘What’s Your Utopia?’ towards the end of last year, an impressive collection that saw them veering between elements of post-rock, shoegaze and electronics whilst maintaining a cohesive sense of flow throughout. Six months on, this download-only album ‘Where’s My Dystopia?’ offers up a remix companion to that preceding album, with a diverse cast of predominantly Western Australian artists being called upon to rework the original tracks. If there’s one unifying theme here, it’s that most of the tracks here centre around gentle downtempo electronics, with the occasional undercurrent of glitchiness thrown in. Seams’ opening reworking of ‘Quantum Chronological’ sees rattling, house-tempo percussive pulse rolling alongside distorted drum samples as a rippling backdrop of glittering synths and stretched out vocal elements gets thrown through all manner of phasing, only for the snapping rhythms to suddenly drop out as feathery guitars trail out into the ether.
Filter Beds meanwhile turn ‘Sunday Stroll’ into a blunted hiphop glide that drapes dreamy layers of ringing percussion and melodic bass runs over a crunching backdrop of headnod beats as delicate guitar loops begin to seep into the mix, before Mei Saraswati’s remix of ‘Collapsible Lung’ kicks things off in ghostly IDM-laced chanson territory as eerie jagged rhythms and bleeping electronics flit against chanteuse vocals, only for things to get dragged off in a smoother leftfield RNB direction by the track’s end. Elsewhere, Tame Impala / Pond’s Jay Watson makes an appearance under his GUM alias, offering up what’s perhaps the closest thing to pop here, turning ‘Drank And Kites And Tomorrow’ into an epic prog-laced wander through reverb-heavy vocals and ominous detuned bass synths that’s a suitably opulent finish to this impressive remix collection. You can get ‘Where’s My Dystopia?’ as a name your price download from http://hiddenshoal.bandcamp.com/album/wheres-my-dystopia”