Shadows are strange things. No matter how much light there is in a room there will still be a shadow lurking about somewhere. As a practitioner of bedsit electronica, Moody Alien – apparently alternately known by his equally prevalent disguise, Mal. O – goes in search of those elusive shadows with his album “A Moody Alien In The Dark”.
As you might therefore expect there is nothing as straightforward as a song here and nothing as straightforward as a soundtrack cue either. Instead, these thirteen songs assemble themselves into a near ritualistic approach to turning down those lights and letting the shadows grow large. That makes Moody Alien a whole different ball game from other practitioners of the chopped up samples and plinky plink genre like Harold Nono. It goes without saying that “A Moody Alien In The Dark” does work best on headphones where the rather flat and murky sound seems more appropriate.
Whilst this album works well as what it is supposed to be – or perhaps more accurately what I think it is supposed to be – it is not, in truth, the kind of album that you would return to often. It demands too much concentration to appreciate but, simultaneously, presents itself off as mere background music. It’s all in the shadows.
Available from Bandcamp.