The Golden Filter / Syndromes

The Golden Filter
Syndromes
(Perfectly Isolated)
* * * *

This ambitious, second full length from mysterious boy girl duo The Golden Filter was presented to the Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli as an offering of inspiration for his next short film, and you too might have dark visions listening to its music.

The album excellently sources icy sounds from the past then re-contextualises them among six untitled tracks. ‘Scene One’ summons murderous, Dario Argento-esque imagery to mind with its proggy organ and electronic heartbeat, then things go from dark to darkly compelling with the next track apparently taking its cues from Dogme films.

Later, after an echoey and haunted school hall piano expresses morbid resignation, the music rips up its spartan rules and introduces jaunty skipping beats, as if telling the tale of a sad young girl, suggested by glumly feminine tones.

With ‘Scene Five’ a sense of transgression is explicit; a spoken word lyric incites us to “shake the rotting tree, stamp the hallowed ground”, while a hexing, almost toxic-sounding goth industrial synth suggests something infinitely malevolent. Bold and compelling.