Musique Machine
Dren

DrenTime & Form

[Zoharum — 2019]
Reviewed 12 July 2019by Roger Batty
Dren is a two piece project from north Poland- the pair brew up a brooding, bass purring, and electro beat snapping blend of stark techno, murky industrial, and electro-tribal beat making. Time & Form is the pair debut release, and it appears on Zoharum- either as a CD or Vinyl release.

Time & Form is an eight-track album- with each of the tracks running between four & six-minute mark. It goes from the darkly sleek latter day Scorn of the opening track “Time”- with its constantly ominous sweeping of tolling ambience, snapping-to-sliding beat-craft, and chilling bass line simmers. Onto the choppy electro ritual beats meet unsettling Silent Hill like scuttling ambience, and blunt synth purr ‘n’ knock of  "I Am a Pilgrim". Through churning malevolence of the second to last track “Shadow Of The Sun” that starts with a mix of slurred chip-chopping industrial percussion, simmering synth sweeps, and brooding synthetic horn atmospherics- before later moving onto manic electro ritual-meets- industrials blends

Sure Time & Form is clearly taking from other similar toned projects that focus on darker-to-more brooding electronica; but there’s enough variation & memorability here to help it stand out from the crowd, and you can hear the project are certainly making in-roads to creating a more distinctive sound. So as debuts go this is pretty satisfying- and if you enjoy brood, darkness & beats I’d give this album a look.