As Irish black metal aesthetes Altar of Plagues reached their career peak, it was clear that frontman James Kelly had other interests. After 2013's electronic-focused Teethed Glory and Injury, he called an end to that band's aggression and physical brutality in favor of the morose atmospherics of his bass-focused solo project WIFE; the first full-length to emerge out of Kelly's fractured electronic inclinations, What's Between, draws from the same barren palette as his past work, but it attempts to approach that darkness through uplifting synth swells and dead-eyed vocalizations rather than screeches and squalls.
At his most focused, Kelly's work recalls the beat-driven bleakness of Ross Tones' Throwing Snow (whose Left_Blank label released WIFE's first missive, 2012's Stoic EP) or his new Tri Angle labelmates. In particular, "Dans Ce" batters Kelly's saccharine vocal with abrasive percussion scrapes and pointillist synth parts, warping his pop predilections into something less easy to apprehend. Because Kelly is given to flighty genre exercises, though, What's Between often feels fragmented and mangled; the leftfield house banger "Living Joy" sidles right next to the creeping Burial-isms of "A Nature Shards", and the brooding vocals and distant clinks that finish off the moody closer "Further Not Better" couldn't be further away from the sunny-eyed emoting of the record's opening salvo "Like Chrome."
That sonic inconsistency can work in Kelly's favor—check the nearly-nauseating transition from the skulking ooze of "Tongue" and the vacant, reconstructed R&B of "Heart Is A Far Light"—but his lack of focus robs What's Between of a definite collective identity. Gone are Altar of Plagues' high-minded ideas and 18-minute movements, and in their place are disfigured attempts at inky beat-pop. Kelly is, as ever, able to conjure disaffection and gloom from his expansive instrumentation, but he hasn't quite figured out how to turn digital desolation into something that matches the emotional and narrative force of his influences. What's Between provides some compelling glimpses at Kelly's cimmerian headspace, but knowing that he possesses the ability and the vision to flesh out his own ideas, it's hard not to be left wanting more.
