Theologian — The Further I Get From Your Star, the Less Light I

You can’t help but feel sorry for New York’s Lee Bartow - on the evidence of this ‘offical’ debut under his new moniker of Theologian that he’s dedicated to “the heartbreakers and the broken-hearted”, he’s plainly got it bad. Although similarly themed to much of his extensive catalogue of sample-based power electronics released under the cheery name of Navicon Torture Technologies, this time the sound sources are all his own and, as such, have the power to invert Tennyson’s much quoted pearl of wisdom: “'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Despite his aim of making the album “as magnificently depressing and enraged as possible”, Theologian’s unrequited love has led him down a marginally subtler, more minimal path for the most part of the release’s hour and a quarter. His pained palette remains relatively constant throughout where rivers of distorted bass drones evaporate and condense into brooding, electronic storms whose presence steadily gains across each track before disappearing malevolently. Often this can have a soundtrack feel, like on the opener, ‘Zero’, whose simple, cycling synth tones that attempt to emerge from the turbulence recall the opening scene in ‘Blade Runner’ that flies the audience across the tops of the over-populated architecture of a decaying city at night.

It is followed by the epic ‘In Times of Need, We All Go against Our Natures’, which maintains the billowing atmospherics but stretches them across 24 minutes, again seeing the same few, successive synth notes repeat relentlessly throughout yet failing to surface. With the odd addition of echoing wails and cries drowning in a sea of reverb, the piece progresses monotonously towards a ranting climax, as distorted shouting finally brings us near to the source of despair.

And so it goes on, with only ‘Bearing Bitter Fruit’ and the closing “hidden track” ‘The Fragility of the Male Ego’ diving down from the moody ether into more familiar PE territory, the former sounding like a helicopter attempting a cliff-face rescue over a harsh sea and the latter describing a volcanic eruption before delivering a de-motivational speech with fierce, screeching vocals.

Other than a petulant message to an ex-partner inspired by the bitterness of separation along the lines of “this is how you’ve made me feel!”, most of this album’s slow movements of minimal sonic materials define more a place than a narrative following in the tradition of the original intent behind ambient music. And it’s a place, while certainly depressing and occasionally enraged, that provides somewhere to wallow but offers no relief from a broken heart.