Review Summary: Much like music for a haunted house, however haunted houses don't stay scary forever.
While randomly searching for new and obscure bands to amuse myself with I am generally pleased to inform you that I have discovered
Diary of Dreams. For those of you who don’t know (or don’t feel like typing it into your search engine) Diary of Dreams is an electronic project created by the German artist Adrian Hates. I myself, being the gloomy guss that I am, was drawn to the heavy darkwave elements that are present on the rather depressing album
Freak Perfume. Depressing in a good way or a bad way? Well, maybe a little of both.
From the opening track
Traum:A it feels as if you’re walking into a haunted castle chock full of mopey sorrow. An eerie piano plays throughout the background making way for quite the ominous buildups. From the moment Adrian sings the line
”confront me!” you’ll know that this album isn’t for a younger audience as the music definitely has a very 80s post-punk feel. The vocals can easily be compared to The Cure’s Robert Smith however they are a slight bit thicker sounding. The prominent use of deep vocals makes the listening experience quite immersive at times and self deprecating lines run fluidly throughout each track.
Traumtanzer uses a slight sprinkle of more upbeat electronic flourishes and excels during the more bouncy portions of the song. The entire song is done in German and I don’t think it could have been crafted better any other way. The song ends up to be one of the standouts on the album and certainly carries a unique charm of its own.
Verdict continues to employ the creepily enchanting piano beats to fuel the dark climaxes that often show face at the midpoints of each song. The electronic atmospheres are never overly fast or overdone but do excel during the faster “laser” type electronic breaks. The bleak lyrics again are expertly woven throughout the track in many forms of self loathing-
Save yourself from needless harm.
An overdose for now?
How can I talk about completeness,
if I consist of many pieces?
For the most part there is quite a bit of praise to be given to
Freak Perfume. The chilling piano layers that create many of the tracks backgrounds create a brilliant focus on atmosphere and give each song quite the spooky feel. It’s also easy to enjoy Adrian’s thickly moody voice as this shines as a stylistic plus. The album does however suffer from a few glaring issues. One of the flaws is that the song structures are fairly straightforward and usually comes down to; “insert brooding piano, add self deprecating vocals, add ominous climax in the middle”. Doing that to the majority off your songs make them tend to wear thin rather quickly no matter how “haunted house” you may sound. The minimalistic approach to electronic effects also didn’t help much as I was constantly hoping for a more accelerated or intricate song. Tracks like
Crysalis hints at a flashy breakout but end up being more of the same brooding style of song. This isn’t a terrible thing but there isn’t much in the way of variation. It also must be noted that the songwriting is particularly superb most notably on the tracks
The Curse and
She and Her Darkness in which the theme of ultimate self deprecation is readily apparent.
So in wrapping up this little package of a review here are things simplified. If you like straightforward depressing darkwave or EMB type music than this is worth a listen. While most of the tracks use minimal and fairly basic synth effects they are still done well but leave much to be desired. The conservative approach could turn quite a few people off as the majority of the songs sound a tad to similar. Also if you don’t want to hear deep, droning vocals that remind you of a clinically depressed Frankenstein than this probably isn’t for you. There’s much to enjoy here but also a handful to be let down about. However if you want to lock yourself in your room for a day because you get the, “never be happy again”, feeling remember to take this album with you.
Recommended listening -
Traum:A and
Traumtanzer
