Review Summary: You will never feel "alone" when listening to this album; here me out.
There’s something about mind.in.a.box’s music that has always peaked my interest. Although I can’t particularly nail it in with a hammer, I think it has something to do with their exceptionally vivid sound.
Lost Alone, in my humble opinion, is possibly the most decisive futurepop album, and for good reason; this album really creates the sound of the future with twinkling synthesizers, robotic yet strangely alluring vocal snippets, and a slew of heart touching lyrics about personal issues, love, death ,and everything in between. That’s just it though; mind.in.a.box has the distinct ability to create music that sounds so organic and beautiful rather than “mechanical” and cold. Arguably, here we have mind.in.a.box. at their apex, and while there a few minor errors here and there, everything sounds so sparklingly organic and thriving.
Sound wise, everything on this album seems to flow out effortlessly, and while you could dubiously draw parallels between this and say, VNV Nation’s
Empire album,
Lost Alone is definitely an album of its own kind. This album is very easy to swallow, nothing intimidating, harsh, or anything above is to be found here, just tranquil inducing music made for people who have had a stressful day at wherever and need to take a breather. The synthesizers seem to be a prime factor for this; they bounce around and float between different parts of songs, releasing a trancy effect on the listener and create nothing but pure ear-candy. While the band doesn’t necessarily explore any other genre with this album, every song on this album is indispensable and essential for the EBM world.
Aforementioned, the album flows perfectly, with a lot of variety. ‘Change’ is driven by that women robotic voice and a truly uplifting chorus with various effervescent synthesizers to back it up. ‘You Will See’ is one of my personal favorites, mostly because of the synth sections that seem to pop up, which are in fact, beautiful and organic. ‘Questions’ is a 6 minute epic which is 100% musical throughout, and ‘Lost Alone’ features that machinelike voice (but it strangely doesn’t manage to ever sound like it) and hopeful sounding instrumentation. ‘Take my Soul’ features the catchiest chorus and ‘Forever Gone’ is definitely the most mesmerizing and warmly pleasant song on the album.
So really, this is easily one of mind.in.a.box’s best albums to date (that’s not saying too much, all of their albums are good), and while the lyrics can be mildly cheesy at times, the album never fails to enthuse me. Given the nature of the music, one might come across this album as rather cheesy and lackluster, but in my opinion, the album is far from it. I’d strongly suggest listening to this album first if you want to uncover what mind.in.a.box is really capable of doing; you won’t be dissatisfied.
