Spill Gold – Highway Hypnosis [Knekelhuis]

Knekelhuis presents us with one of the works that have surprised us most in this new pandemic era. Perhaps because in some way it makes us see that darkness can harbour some beauty and hope, and that destruction and degradation can be simply a process of reconstruction or adaptation.

Spill Gold debuts in Knekelhuis with a curious mix of sounds that manages to place you in several points of space-time at once. Above all, this is an album with an extraordinary musicality, with a harmonic creativity based on the duality between darkness and light, as well as combining contemporary electronic music genres with other styles such as krautrock.

Beast Machine Alien is the track that opens Highway Hypnosis. In this first cut we can already appreciate this excellent mix between the solemnity of the voices with gothic tints and a renewed line of Kosmische Musik. In the track of the same name, a substantial change can be observed towards a formula oriented towards cosmic pop with clear allusions to retrospect. Ecotone Part 1 has more to do with darkwave than with pop. Oyster is the fourth track, and once again, these two womans give the album a touch of electronic pop. With Burning they mix elements of krautrock with a small portion of darkness, without creating an environment dark enough to be classified as such. Ecotone Part 2 has in common with the first part the percussion and little else, because if the first part has an electronic sound, this is more organic. Bird Soul closes this reference with a chaotic mix of melodies with pentatonic tones, a soft voice, ethnic rhythms, an arpeggiated bass line and a large number of drones.

Release date: November 23rd, 2020.