Siderartica is a project of Elena Alice Fossi from Kirlian Camera. Musicwise the electronic sounds certainly have similarities to the recent work of KC like “Still Air” and “Invisible Front”. In general the songs on “Shapes And Colours From The Land Of God” are more uptempo and danceable. Except for Elena, of whom some sensual photos are included in the booklet, the band consists of Andrea Savelli (also collaborator of Kirlian Camera) and Andrea Fossi. Furthermore Carlo Dainelli does lead vocals on two tracks.
As you could expect, the mostly electronic music has an icy and hypnotic technoid sound, which is very well complemented by the cool vocals of Fossi. Though the music is cold, the feeling that the music evokes is rather warm and sensual. The music of the album is highly varied in rhythms, sounds and tempo. Soft tracks like ‘Snow white corpse (found)’ are alternated with potential dancefloor hits like ‘Antland’.
Often the lively songs seem to exist of various parts, with unexpected sound swings. My favourite is probably the robotic ‘Lucky Village’s Oversight’. The analogue synth sounds, vocoder vocals and the clear wave influences remember of the early 80’s. Another nice nostalgic synthpop piece is ‘Colours from the land of God’.
“Shapes And Colours From The Land Of God” is the second Siderartica album, after “Night Parade”. The release comes in a luxurious digipack, with many photos and lyrics. The package also includes a bonus cd, “Toys and robots from the land of God”, with six additional tracks and remixes, which are more clearly club-orientated with heavier beats. My favourite pieces on this bonus cd are the uptempo ‘Arkhangel`sk’ (Memorandum mix by Morph) and the dramatic closing track ‘Night Parade’ (remix by Y-Luk-O)..
