music review

::: Cradle Grave ::: "saper vedere"

dark-wave electronic dark-ambient

Cradle/Grave's debut CD is an enchanting collection of melancholic minimalist darkwave electronica. The two-piece band is 1/2 based in Wollongong and 1/2 in Canberra. For me, the influences come from dark ambient isolationist music, gothic music, trip-hop, labels such as Dorobo Records (acts like Shinjuku Thief) and it's even comparable in places with well-known ventures such as Enigma and Delerium. It's mostly instrumental with a few tracks featuring ghostly whispered male vocals. It's hard to know what the song titles at the end of the CD are as there are only 10 listed on the jacket, while there are 12 tracks on the CD.

Anyway, my favourite piece is track 11 (the name of which I can't figure out!) with it's chugging bass-synth, minimal piano melody, soaring synth-strings, crunching trip-hoppish beats, and well-chosen world music female vox samples. This is something that's accessible & worthy of widespread radio play. My next favourite is "deadman's ocean 1 & 2" which sounds likes a soundtrack to a play: minimal bell motif, ghostly and gothicish droning waves of isolationist synth and noise, finally building into exotic tribalistic electroid percussion. 12 tracks over 64 minutes. Released in co-operation with Heartland Records - PO Box 126, balaclava, Vic. 3183.

You can get a copy of the CD from the band for $??? care-of: PO Box 1034 Albion Park Rail NSW 2527 Australia. E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Cabaret/9670/