We here at TZEEEAC love the whole new wave of 80s retro-synth, and with PERTURBATOR having ridden this wave to orgasmic proportions in the past with the beautiful "Terror 404" and the darker "I Am The Night", we all knew that his third record was going to be something of serene beauty. He was even cool enough to answer our dumb questions a while back, so we got you pretty much covered on this subject.
"Dangerous Days" starts out smoothly, with the opening track "Welcome Back" setting the game for us. After that the fortunately titled "Perturbator's Theme" kicks you in the nuts all of the sudden, making sure you feel like you're sinking in your chair from the sheer intensity and perfect synth hooks. There's a couple of songs on this LP that have some relaxing vocals added on them for good measure. Now, I haven't enjoyed this sort of experimentation on PERTURBATOR's behalf in the past (some songs come to mind from "I Am The Night" that really didn't do it for me) but shit, man, the vocals here just bring "Dangerous Days" even closed to the top spot on what will be this year's best album list. They really tie the whole thing together, like mayonnaise on some golden shaworma.
This album really stands out on two levels: hooks and emotions, and I'm going to talk about the latter. The fact that the instrumentals on this album give you so much energy and emotion is just something that really can't be that easily achieved using decades-old keyboards and loopers. Then there's the tracks with the vocals on them that bring about 10% of what DAFT PUNK have been doing since forever with the whole "human/robot" deal, they sound like robots playing synths and vocals, but feel very human alltogether and emotion-y, and I find that really really good.
I've enjoyed PERTURBATOR's early albums so much because they sounded very retro and to a certain small degree, pretty cheesy (songs about Linnea Quigley and Josh Holmes.. you know what I'm talking about), but with "Dangerous Days" this is most certainly not the case. The whole LP is way darker and way more deep and mature compared to his other work (this shit sounds straight out of Pitchfork but it's as accurate as I can say it) and for that I hold this album very very high. The evolution that this artist has come through is about as good as it gets.
9.5/10
Yay! Which song did like the most from this? For me it's a tie between "Future Club", "She Is Young, She Is Beautiful, She Is Next" and "Humans Are Such Easy Prey", they all have that insane overwhelming sound.
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