- Transcendent as Walls' brand of sunrise Krautrock has sometimes been ("Burnt Sienna," "Raw Umber"), such slow, gauzy music is only one dimension of the duo's sound. Live, they've always been far more muscular, drawing on various influences from early modern dance music: Italo disco, EBM, even Chicago house. In their slightly stiff way, there has always been a jacking side to Walls that's gone largely overlooked.
Until now, that is. On their third and supposedly final studio album, Sam Willis and Alessio Natalizia have delivered a 360° perspective on what they do. The opening title track still sounds like a band brainstormed into being at a Border Community meeting. It is more insistent than we might expect, its synths fatter around the midriff, but its sections of motorik pulse fleshed out with spiralling guitars are classic Walls. Similarly, "Radiance" is a grand, meditative swell of gaseous drones.
But at other times Walls kick into a more aggressive gear. "Moon Eye" morphs from a cosmic synth fandango into a rampaging beast—techno by way of The Chemical Brothers. In its distorted arps and shrill spasms of noise, "I Can Give You Anything But Love" sounds like a lost Moroder demo rescued from a mouldering tape reel. Even the beatless "Tongue Pad" peaks in an unusually dramatic starburst of synths.
The old reservations about Walls remain. This is a short album that toggles around pretty familiar sounds without doing anything new with them. But in this final salvo, Walls have proven that they are a force.
Tracklist01. Urals
02. Moon Eye
03. Altai
04. Voluta
05. Tongue Pad
06. I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
07. Radiance