{"id":43952,"date":"2014-11-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/desire-2\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T07:31:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:31:31","slug":"desire-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/desire-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Desire"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to hazard a guess that not many people would spend two and a half hours intently watching Terminator 2: Judgment Day<\/i> only to declare, when it\u2019s over, \u201cI want to compose music like that.\u201d It\u2019s just not what your average person is likely to get out of that experience\u2026<\/p>\n

The exception would appear to be Mr. Derrick Stembridge, who has, with this album, crafted 10 tracks of edgy electronic music that sounds very much like the soundtrack to a sci-fi thriller. It is moody, often atmospheric, and sometimes willfully weird, full of foreboding and anticipation in the way it builds and then takes sudden, strange turns.<\/p>\n

As OK Go can attest<\/a>, I\u2019m not a fan of chilly, inorganic, synthesizer-centric music. That said, if you\u2019re looking for a particular atmosphere\u2014cold, futuristic and sci-fi-ish\u2014then Drifting in Silence might be right up your alley. It would be a stretch to call Desire<\/i> engaging, but it is different and sometimes intriguing. It\u2019s just hard to wrap your arms around anything of lasting value here; it\u2019s all mood and little substance.<\/p>\n

Desire<\/i>\u2019s nine tracks, each given a single-word title full of foreshadowing, range from three to seven minutes. \u201cUntil\u201d opens things up with a looming, ominous industrial feel. Then \u201cFaith\u201d turns even more industrial, though perhaps less interesting; this track feels rather generically futuristic until Stembridge strips it down to just one or two tones in the middle, giving it a simple drama that could work well as a soundtrack to visuals.<\/p>\n

The next three cuts offer a bit of variety without escaping the basic palette of cool, distant synth music. \u201cParallel\u201d feels a little more optimistic than its predecessors; the energetic \u201cLie\u201d could have been an outtake from an old episode of Miami Vice<\/i>; and \u201cDesire\u201d is a particularly harsh industrial number for much of its five and a half minutes, though it briefly adopts an airy, almost Pink Floyd feel in the middle section. In other places, though, the track feels claustrophobic, with a range of different synth tones competing with one another. <\/p>\n

Interest slips a bit in the latter third of the album. The seven-minute \u201cUndercurrent\u201d offers atmosphere aplenty, but nothing beyond; it just looms and then looms some more. \u201cConsciousness\u201d feels rather generic and underscores what I really don\u2019t enjoy about all-electronic music: electronic rhythm sections. They\u2019re so robotic in texture and tone, I always end up longing for real electric or acoustic bass and acoustic drums. <\/p>\n

Closer \u201cEcho\u201d is more contemplative, with a keyboard that sounds like it could be actual acoustic piano. It forms a rather pretty, mellow coda to an album whose dark tones can otherwise come to feel oppressive after a while.<\/p>\n

Desire<\/i> is an accomplished album in the sense that the compositions are for the most part fully realized and well-produced; everything is sharp and clean and strikes a definite mood. It just feels in the end like half a loaf, the spare, brooding score to a movie I\u2019ve never seen. I\u2019d be curious to see it one day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[9535],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-43952","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-drifting-in-silence","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52030,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43952\/revisions\/52030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43952"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43952"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}