After becoming the Weeknd’s personal sound guru-- a list of credits that includes not only the entirety of the singer’s sprawling Trilogy as well as every other song Abel Tesfaye has been a featured artist on-- Carlo "Illangelo" Montagnese was perfectly poised to ascend from behind the board to legitimate pop stardom. The smart business decision for someone in his place would have been to reach out and grab up some of the offers from A-plus-list rappers and Miley Cyruses that have probably been stacking up in his manager’s inbox. Instead, Montagnese has taken the more unorthodox path of releasing an album of challenging electronic music that’s also an adaptation of Milton’s Paradise Lost. It's also set in space. It’s not the most marketable decision he could have made.
History of Man is an album designed to defy expectations, which can be frustrating because most of the fairly reasonable expectations Montagnese’s well-established fan base had for his debut solo album-- simply more of the same nocturnal, narcotic slow jams that have until now constituted his entire catalog-- would have made for a perfectly good record, or possibly even a great one. What we get instead is kind of a mess, but to its credit, it’s a fascinating one.
Adapting Milton’s masterpiece as an instrumental electronic album is an ambitious task, but ambition is one thing Montagnese doesn’t seem to lack. Everything about History of Man is a challenge to himself and his audience, from the harsh synth patches to the partsy songwriting, all the way down to the lengthy liner notes that juxtapose a sci-fi retelling of Satan’s (or rather “prisoner #870729’s”) prideful revolt with images that blend classical European art with iconography inspired by NASA’s Voyager probes.
It’s a far different way of working than Montagnese is known for. His collaborations with the Weeknd are sometimes abrasive, but they’re always aimed at seducing their audience. On History he’s more than willing to risk alienating listeners for the sake of following his most experimental instincts. Some of his gambits pay off nicely, like interrupting the slow ambient accretion of the opening track, “One Dreamy Hum", with glitchy snippets of noise jump-cut in at unexpected moments. Others, like the aggro drum & bass pastiche “A Strange World", are less successful.
History’s best moments come when he’s not playing against type. Songs like “One Dreamy Hum” and “Farewell” showcase his talents for creating deeply fascinating sonic textures that work just fine without a vocalist, or even a beat, for that matter. The first minute and a half of “War” is a tense amalgam of dissonant sound design and post-hip-hop rhythms that doesn’t need the liner notes to suggest dystopian sci-fi. But Montagnese can’t seem to resist the urge to overwork things. “Hum” and “Farewell” both eventually pick up beats near their ends that spoil the mood that they had set so nicely, and after that flawless 90 seconds “War” takes a totally unnecessary turn into dubsteppy post-rock.
It’s hard not to respect Montagnese’s enthusiasm for upending his own trademark aesthetic and recklessly exploring new ground, but in the process History sacrifices too much of the pleasures that his trademark offers. Ambition can be an admirable virtue, but it has a way of getting out of hand, and ultimately turning self-destructive. Somebody wrote a really good poem about that once.
