It’s undoubtedly a good thing that most people don’t judge artists solely by their name, otherwise no one would have listened to The Beatles or GY!BE and artists called Lucy would be better off not releasing music at all. Thankfully, at least part of humanity is willing to let the music do the talking, and for good reason; when it comes to this unassuming debut at least, the return on your aural investment is massive.
Wordplay for Working Bees is a vast, expansive canvas; a melancholy twilight of somnolent synths sprawled across a dark landscape, surrounded by the echoing whirlwinds of indistinct and indefinable voices that swirl through the aural ether. These fragments of dark and disturbing monologues and conversations, coupled with the chilling ambience that Lucy conjures up, imbue much of the album with a disconcerting air, one that genuinely makes for an alluringly frightening experience.
The true strength of the music, however, is evident once one delves beneath the icy obsidian surface, to where the shadowy mechanisms of sound lurk unseen in the darkness. Here it becomes most evident that Wordplay is nothing less than a meticulously crafted work of art, one where layer upon layer of dense and gorgeous sound has been welded together to form an immense behemoth of intelligible noise.
Lucy has the uncanny ability to weave a dark, enthralling web of sound that can pass from astonishingly blasé to crushingly intense in a matter of seconds. The astounding
Gas, with its morose, droning synths and morbid whispers, twists and coils around your ears like a serpent around its prey; sinuous, deadly and utterly terrifying.
Many of the tracks feature off-kilter beats that stagger as if drunk;
Lav clatters like an overloaded steam train through the night, polyrhythmic percussion clashing in the darkness. All the while, the gentlest brushstrokes diffuse tiny splashes of rain and wind over the surroundings, permeating the music with a heartbreakingly human pulse. Indeed, it is the way that raw power is integrated so subtly with pure beauty that elevates
Wordplay to another dimension; the raindrops that patter over
Mas are so agonizingly exquisite to the ears that it’s almost unbearable.
Lucy’s programming ability is second to none, an elegant ballet that melds melody and rhythm into an intoxicating dance, a genuine hurricane of turbulent emotion that emanates from a dark, discordant stage with almost supernatural precision. His skill in mixing cold electronics and soulful ambience rivals that of Monolake; both are utterly accomplished in creating dark, enchanting masterpieces that threaten to burst into bloom at any moment. This is one such creature; although its skeleton may be that of cold metal, its heart is human and buzzing with an overwhelming life force of almost irrepressible vitality.
Wordplay for Working Bees is sublime, beguiling and totally, utterly irresistible.
