Hanin Elias - Future Noir

  by Matt Williams

published: 19 / 5 / 2005

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Review

This is a soundtrack! Not like a film soundtrack but a life soundtrack. This album sits in the background to your day, the individual tracks collectively enhancing your experience, good or bad, negative or positive. Elias’s creation tips its hat in many ways to darker goth music from the 80’s, as you would expect from the ‘noir’ reference, but surprisingly I also hear hints of a notable individual who emerged from the Minneapolis music scene during the aforementioned decade. Drawing some parallels with the 'Black' album, released in the Mid 80’s in a bootleg format only, there is an uncomfortable edge to both the music and the lyrical content, unleashing Elias’s philosophy on the music loving world. Simple piano riffs layered with general electronica and sampling grace every track, not quite Trent Reznor in style there is still a distorted industrial feel to it all, but Elias still manages to approach her music with subtlety, communicating anger and frustration without compromising her feminine touch. In 'Fight Together' Elias sings about her annoyance with the mainstream British music press, something that many bands will relate to. It’s difficult, beyond the title, to interpret whether this is an anthem for all Elias fans to rise up and negate the bad publicity she may have received or for all independently signed musicians to reject all aspirations to grace the covers of these publications. While this isn't an album that would take residence on my turntable, it might appeal not only to fans of Elias' former band Atari Teenage Riot but also those who enjoy early 90’s industrial metal from the likes of Pretty Hate Machine era NIN.

Track Listing:-

1 Untouchable
2 After All (Drums)
3 Future Noir
4 City Lights
5 Burn
6 Iced Icon
7 Fight Together
8 Eaten Alive
9 War (Extreme V4)
10 The Rats
11 In My Room
12 After All (Original)
13 Untouchable (Unplugged)