Big Black Delta - Trágame Tierra

Big Black Delta
Trágame Tierra
2016
Spotify

Jonathan Bates known as Big Black Delta and touring member of M83 has released this album Trágame Tierra which feels like an exploration of the electro-pop genre. Where are the most recent M83 record Junk dug deep into 80s sounds, to its detriment, Trágame Tierra does something similar with electronic. You get some House tracks, some arena filling electro-pop and even a cameo by Debbie Gibson on one track. It is an odd mix, and one that seems a bit surface level. Bates is sable to create highly industrial tracks that are quite melodic, but there is very little sticking power. With sons like these you want them to become earworms to stick with people but there simply is not much of that on Trágame Tierra. The ever present down beat seems to be the focal point of this record, a thumping pacemaker that never leaves but just kind of looms ominously in the background. A lot of the music on Trágame Tierra can feel impersonal because it is so computer generated, but that doesn't seem to slow Bates down, He is going to keep pushing until it sticks, a drive that could be seen as both a blessing and a curse. The one thing you get right away from these tracks is how the massive the potential for visuals can be. You can see the lights, the strobes and pop-art that would just fit absolutely perfect with this sound. It certainly is a very exciting prospect.

One thing that are hard to get past however is Bates' vocals. Often they simply are not very good. The music is to big and to bold for him to be able to compete with. The songs suffer because of this and you are left feeling a bit dissatisfied. The bigness certainly is the Big Black Delta's strength on Trágame Tierra and it really never wains from the arena filling level it begins with. "Strange Cakes is probably the outlier on the album with it's more low kep approach to sound. It fills the room in the periphery rather than right in your face. It is minimalism done on an album that seems to be all about getting the most out of each and every note. However I would be remiss if I did not give some time to the train wreck that is the title track of this album. "Trágame Tierra" unfolds slowly, painstakingly slowly, ten minutes and ten seconds slowly and when it finally does reveal what it's all about, you're infuriated that it took this long. For a song to be over ten minutes there need to be some stakes, some risks and some rewards, but there is none of that here. It feels like more of a "we did it because we could" sort of thing rather than really making a song in earnest that the listeners would enjoy. By the end of the track almost nothing has happened, nothing has progressed. It is a sad end to an otherwise pretty good record, but it is one you can't discount because it makes up for almost a fifth of everything you hear. My suggestion is once the final note drops on tack eleven, skip immediately. In the end Trágame Tierra is a decent record with a lot of broad and often odd choices.

6.0 out of 10