With his early work being club-aimed music that was still musically rich enough for headphone listening, Danish producer
Trentemøller came on like a composition student with a dark streak, plus a love of progressive house music and techno. His debut album, 2006's
The Last Resort, was a deep, dark, and delicious overabundance of bass and reverb, thumping away like Berlin or Detroit techno but then layering melodies that touched upon pop, all while the producer side of the artist dropped every glitchy trick in the book. It would seem like he was showing off if those plentiful edits and layers-upon-layers didn't work, but when he went indie pop and soundtrack-esque on 2010's The Great White Yonder, the results varied. The album jumped from indie song to house-music-all-night-long with a
Duane Eddy-styled guitar rave-up in the middle, and while this third effort does essentially the same thing (the rave-up now replaced with a twangy, dusty, "Personal Jesus"-type cut called "Trails"),
Lost is where all the pieces fall into place. Blame the superior songwriting or the natural flow of the compositions as the indie group
Low join for "The Dream," a song that's wistful and ruminates about life on the level of a beloved
Pink Floyd deep track."Gravity," with
Jana Hunter, suggests the soaring
My Bloody Valentine anchored by the tick-tock of
Kraftwerk, although the swaying melody and the swollen melancholy are entirely
Trentemøller. "Candy Tongue," with
Marie Fisker, is a gentle mix of electro and acoustic that plays to the producer's love of wonder and mystery, while both "Come Undone" with
Kazu Makino and "Deceive" with
Sune Rose Wagner border on house music for Goths, even if they come with a refinement the electro-industrial crowd rarely offers. As on his previous effort, the instrumental numbers cross over from clubland with the great "Still on Fire" thumping its majestic
New Order-like bass, while "Morphine" flirts with drone and world music on a cut that feels like a dangerous journey to buy the drug, but "Hazed" and the hidden coda that complete that album bring reminders of
The Last Resort's endless, echoing nightscape. It's an ironic title for an album that's so sure, and even if his early fans frown as their dancing shoes collect dust, complaining about what doesn't happen on
Lost seems silly when compared to the wonderful and intoxicating things that actually do. ~ David Jeffries