Fans of U.S.-gothic-sound à la Faith And The Muse watch out. Dreamfully atmospheric, sometimes more aggressive, electronically fitted out gothic sounds the male/female duo PURR MACHINE from L. A., the city of angels, delivers with their actual release Starry. Its predecessor Ging Ging has already been published eight years ago – a long time in the music business. Apparently PURR MACHINE have used this time to deal with many influences in their music and to round up many guest musicians, amongst other William Faith from the already mentioned gothic icon Faith And The Muse.
Starry is an album, which stands up to genre-conventions and short-dated trends in an exquisite way. It dares the listener with an enormous bandwidth of sounds and moods. Sometimes the tendency goes to Industrial Rock, sometimes there are off-key pop compositions and dreamy, synth-carried sounds with heavenly-voices-like singing, but in general the dense arrangements of the sound mark out the sound of PURR MACHINE. After repeated listening to the album you can fish out some small pearls of the stylistic potpourri. The beginning of the CD comes along aggressively: Get Close is a chaotic opener. Sad I’m Gone appears like a drug-blurred ballad, Monkey Dreams reminds of old songs from Clan Of Xymox, later there are alternative pop and the rocking ear candy Everlast until in the middle of the album the meditative title track offers a short break. The next song Chose Your Fire sounds exceptionally heavy with the help of noisy guitars. The real highlights appear lately. At The Warning the duo creates a tense atmosphere, which you miss a little bit in the remaining songs, because they seem badly unstructured, unfinished in songwriting and don’t come to the point. The following Holding Back My Tears, a slow, melancholically dusted wall of sound, is the second highlight of the album.
All in all PURR MACHINE are ailing at some songs. So Starry can become a straining experience, because quite a few tracks lack the needed structure. The manifold elements and ideas weren’t processed into a coherent ensemble with a leitmotif. Thus many of the existing potential were not used. Nevertheless Starry is an extraordinary release. Lovers of ambitious and demanding gothic-sounds should check it out implicitly.