Matte Blvck – Soulless

Dystopian beauty with minor flaws

From the very first second, Soulless' min­im­al­ist synth tap­ping cap­tiv­ates me. The con­trolled ten­sion that builds up from the sparse sounds has an almost phys­ic­al effect. Added to this is the warm vocals, which lend the oth­er­wise cool sound struc­ture an emo­tion­al depth that is rarely out of place with Matte Blvck.

The synths are trimmed for pure pres­sure and crisp­ness, everything sits cleanly, almost sur­gic­ally in the mix. When the voice falls silent, the track trans­forms into a dark, dysto­pi­an soundtrack – haunt­ing, but almost too lost in itself. This is where the bal­ance tips for me: the lyr­ics remain too thin for me, the instru­ment­al sec­tions a little too exten­ded. Soulless is undoubtedly well pro­duced, but for me it ranks among the weak­er moments in Matte Blvck's oth­er­wise impress­ively coher­ent repertoire.

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