Videodrones makes music that grabs you by the jugular and doesn’t let go. It’s dark, brooding electronic music that
conjures up late night flicks you’d come across when you were a kid in the witching hour. Vampires, zombies, demons, witches, and the supernatural emanating from your television as a strange, buzzing wave of music accompanied it. Sometimes(most of the time) the music would somehow transcend the film it was scoring. Those special soundtracks made an impact on a whole generation of both music lovers and lovers of horror cinema. Two of those music and horror lovers make up the Danish duo Videodrones. On their debut record, 2016s Mondo Ferox, they showed their chops for the musically macabre and dense, analog sonics. It was a fantastic debut that kept those who found it clamoring for more, like zombies scratching at the door wanting flesh.
These two master musicians wasted no time in delving back into the dark corners of Frizzi, Rizatti, Carpenter, and Bobby Beausoleil. Nattens Hævn sticks to the formula laid out by Mondo Ferox, but opens the musical doors even further into straight up kosmiche music. It’s dark, pulsating, and feels like falling into a strange, recurring fever dream.
“The Jugular Gate” starts things off with a pulsating feeling of cosmic dread. Percussive stabs emulate a robotic heart beat as synth drones wheeze by. There’s a more prominent sense of melody here, too. “Maniac City” pulls a bit from Brian Gascoigne’s Phase IV soundtrack. It harkens back to the days of the mellotron and synthetic choirs. Fabio Frizzi haunts this one as well. Even the name brings to mind a film Lucio Fulci might’ve released in the late-70s. “Dream Within A Dream” has a lighter touch, sounding more Le Matos than Popol Vuh. “Hero” wavers and krinkles like some lost, unearthed cassette you found under the seat of an ’81 Skylark. If a sound could be sepia-toned, this track would be that. “Domains” sounds like space madness. It’s oscillating doom on a grand scale.
Videodrones is a musical vehicle for dark sound explorations, but these two also take the album into different musical atmospheres. “A Column” bubbles up like Vangelis in the throes of a cosmic revelation. “Night Dome” grabs some of the Bobby Beausoleil magic, while “A Blade In Your Mind” has a neon-lit 80s feel. Something you would’ve heard on a Commodore 64 game. “Shape Shifter” sounds like John Williams in 8-bit form. Closing track “Nattens Hævn”(which translates to ‘Revenge of the Night’) is a tip of the hat to John Carpenter and Phantasm‘s Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave. Gorgeously dark.
Nattens Hævn makes good on the promise of Mondo Ferox in that Videodrones continue the dark synth improvisations while still keeping a very cinematic feel. But Nattens Hævn also beautifully opens the sonic doors and windows a bit to allow just a smattering of light in. Not enough to scare the things that go bump in the night away. Just enough to keep them at bay for a bit.
