Prepulse ~ Breathing The Clouds (album review) ... The clouds cast Dracula's shadow!

Style: industrial, electronica
Label: self-released
Year: 2010
Home: North Carolina

Band: Elliott Pauli ~ all instruments

Additional: Jesse Cleverly ~ guitar

Listen, 'my angels', are you a 'dollface' 'foxy little lady' standing in 'Dracula's shadow' 'in pyscho love' awaiting 'sexstasy'? If you are ... with this string of song titles I couldn't resist creating ... let me introduce you to the musical world of multi-instrumentalist Elliott Pauli aka Prepulse, & his guitar/keyboards driven emotionally tortured hypnotic industrial meets gothic electronica, so much of it ready to be transformed into a dancefloor mix (for example, "Foxy Little Lady", "The Internal Debate", "In Psycho Love", "Crossing Over"). The first time I heard Prepulse it was on a musicians forum a few years ago. I was intrigued by the music & asked for the album. Listening to it again, a long overdue return, nothing has changed for my ears & the music might be that much more interesting. I listen to hundreds of albums a year for this blog. I look for music that is interesting in some way, interesting both good & bad actually, from wherever it is including indie & mainstream. I just know that unless an album has some good trivia around it then bland mainstream music doesn't get mentioned here. The problem is that a lot of indie bands I review are too interested in sounding like a lot of mainstream bands I've already passed on reviewing. "Here's another struggling indie band" is a less than interesting phrase I gave up writing awhile ago. Is there anyone out there still doing original music? Yes! Prepulse! & thank you, Prepulse, for following your musical gut, more power to you, whatever the response, but from what I see generally positive with radio play. While my earlier description of music might sound cold on paper it's quite far from cold. Prepulse has just the right mix of industrial meets synth-pop with synthesized vocals & distorted guitars, atmospheric keyboards, drums, tingling sounds & at its maddest lurches like a monster slowly & menacingly. Over it all the vocals call out with an array of in character whines & cries & fit perfectly as they're as dynamic as the music & do at times sound like a mad man crying out for something. If there's any weaknesses in the album its that there's too many slower songs. It's a far moodier album that way than one might expect only hearing a few tunes. Some of the slower songs do mix in more vibrant dynamics, but at times they also drag with monotony turning the lurch into a slow walk. It's not bad thse moments, but its the dynamics of fast/slow, angry/loving that really make the album. The theme of the album is the different faces of love, but too many of those faces awash into each other with too much contemplative yearning love & not enough high energy lustful love ... one essentially a climax of the other, oh, but which one?