Frozen Autumn, The – Emotional screening device

This album from the Italian duo The Frozen Autumn is already a few years old (the songs were recorded between 2000 and 2002), but it came only recently in my possession and is now regularly to be found in my stereo. The electronic music can be described as a mixture of synthpop and wave.

The Frozen Autumn, consisting of Diego and Arianna, not only have a good ear for catchy synth melodies and rhythms, their vocals are also very nice (I especially like Diego’s sensitive voice). Furthermore their music has a very warm atmosphere and emotional feelings despite the cold synth sounds. Though the album has a large amount of 80’s synthwave nostalgia, the songs nevertheless sound very fresh. Many of the tracks on “Emotional Screening Device” are quite dynamic and rather danceable. My favourite tracks are the moving ‘When you are sad’, the uptempo synthpop piece ‘Is everything real?’, the nostalgic, oddly titled ‘Sperm like honey’ and the pleasantly flowing ‘Second Sight’.

“Emotional screening device” is their third and most recent album, after “Pale awakening” (re-released with bonus tracks as “The Pale Collection”) and “Fragments of memories”, which had more darkwave influences, like on the small hit ‘Dusk is like a dagger’. Furthermore they recorded a cd under the name of Static Movement, with a sound that is not far removed from the latest Frozen Autumn album. Meanwhile The Frozen Autumn has a DVD out, ” The Early Visuals”. The band is also working on a new album, which should appear somewhere in 2005.

artist: Frozen Autumn, The
label: Eibon Records
details: 11 tracks, 61 min. 2002 [FZA034]