{"id":17745,"date":"2014-10-02T10:16:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T15:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/?p=17745"},"modified":"2014-10-02T10:16:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T15:16:42","slug":"album-review-niagara-dont-take-it-personally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/2014\/10\/02\/album-review-niagara-dont-take-it-personally\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Niagara &#8211; <i>Don&#8217;t Take It Personally<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Niagara_Dont_Take_It_Personally.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-17746\" src=\"http:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Niagara_Dont_Take_It_Personally-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"cd-wallet.indd\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Niagara_Dont_Take_It_Personally-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Niagara_Dont_Take_It_Personally-120x120.jpg 120w, https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Niagara_Dont_Take_It_Personally-50x50.jpg 50w, https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Niagara_Dont_Take_It_Personally.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>Italian experimental duo Niagara have been turning heads and perking ears since their debut album<em> Otto <\/em>dropped onto the scene last year. Their follow-up, <em>Don\u2019t Take It Personally<\/em>, released earlier this month on Monotreme Records, expands upon their craft of off-kilter brilliance as it traverses forty-five minutes of gritty electronica and captivating psychedelic pop. With its impossible-to-identify influences, ambient peregrinations and bizarre textures, it won\u2019t likely be a crowd-pleaser, but the sheer power of creativity unleashed over the course of ten tracks is a testament to audacious minds unafraid to dive head-first into uncharted territory.<\/p>\n<p>As a concept album, <em>Don\u2019t Take It Personally<\/em> narrates the struggle of the soul against the looming permanence of technology; possibly this is why the best moments come in tracks like \u201cFat Kaoss\u201d where psychedelic bundles of electronic textures, sounding like a buried swarm of ghoulish electro-bots tearing and ripping apart whatever it is exactly that surrounds them, give way to beautiful interludes of dreamy instrumentals and serene human voices. As a whole, \u201cCurrybox\u201d is the best work; its drained vocals and underworld meditations elevate suddenly upon a symphonic billow of near-eastern strings. \u201cVanilla Cola,\u201d which retains elements of traditional rock, is a close second as it builds a dizzying trip through a secret garden of beautiful, spinning sound.<\/p>\n<p>Grim electronica guides the fuzzy radio chatter of \u201cSpeak&amp;Spell,\u201d while \u201cLaes\u201d plays as a conversation between a demented toymaster and his creepy computer elves. Humanity reclaims its senses with \u201cPopeye\u201d and \u201cChina Eclipse,\u201d both tracks of which float through wondrous ambiences and deliver hopeful melodies. But the reign of machines is inevitable in \u201cElse\u201d where, amongst a thriving soundscape of living machinery, robotic vocals repeat the refrain, \u201cFeel like electric machine\u201d until being blown apart by virulent pumps of EDM grit. \u201cBloom,\u201d the album finale, is dolorous and procession-like with funereal voices guiding mankind to its final resting place, building to a wistful piano anthem that dies off into garbled ambiances. The story leaves one yearning for something further. Be sure to keep an eye on these talented experimentalists in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Italian experimental duo Niagara have been turning heads and perking ears since their debut album Otto dropped onto the scene last year. Their follow-up, Don\u2019t Take It Personally, released earlier this month on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":17746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,27],"tags":[3229,2410,1079,3230,3228,1039],"class_list":["post-17745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-album-review","tag-dont-take-it-personally","tag-edm","tag-electronic","tag-monotreme-records","tag-niagara","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17747,"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17745\/revisions\/17747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poppressinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}