Autarkic is the name for Tel Aviv-based producer Nadav Spiegel, a solo electronic act and one of the more promising artists in the city’s revived electronic scene, along with the likes of Red Axes and Moscoman. The latter released Autarkic’s mini-LP Can You Pass the Knife? last year on his Disco Halal label, their first release of original productions after a series of Middle Eastern-tinged disco edits. It showed the young producer straddling house, coldwave, electro, Depeche Mode-style synth-pop, and the like, keeping the proceedings just sullied enough.
Now Spiegel follows that up with his nine-track debut LP. As both its title and cover image of a cigarette stubbed out in a cupcake suggest, Spiegel is conflicted when it comes to love. Conceived as a documentation and remedy for a recent heartbreak, the album reveals Spiegel’s angst, mistrust, spite, and—like any good romantic—willingness to go through the wringer all over again by album’s end.
“New Heimat” features squalls of guitar feedback, churning bass, and distorted hi-hats topped by Spiegel’s strangulated vocals; it resembles a post-punk band rather than a producer behind some gear. Spiegel repeats the refrain “home is where the hatred is” until the words start to fray. But is he speaking of “home” in the domestic or national sense? With such lines as “No more fighting for the state/No more bleeding for some faith,” home sounds like the last place he wants to be.
The track then segues into the bent synths of “Violence.” Closed hi-hats and shaken bells rattle about the slinking disco bass, reminiscent at times of LCD Soundsystem’s “45:33.” It’s here, though, that Spiegel’s lines start to fall flat. “Envy/It’s not good,” he deadpans, and then draws on a couple’s line of argument (“It’s not about you”). But he fails to do much with either thought. The terse and glowering “How to Cheat” again finds the production in fine form, but Spiegel’s lyrics make it feel like a rant, like a friend whose chat about his ex turns from therapeutic to bitter. Petty and overly dramatic, he sings of sodomizing the mind, money, and sex, to where his temper makes the words verge on incoherence.
All of which makes “Gibberish Love Song” the most effective track here, as Spiegel opts for catchy bits of nonsense rather than embittered lines. A siren-like tone widens into a brooding banger. When the words do return, it’s for a mumbling kosmische take on Guided by Voices’ “The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory,” a curious cover to slot in the middle of the LP. It’s a curveball that doesn’t quite land, but it proves Spiegel’s penchant for going leftfield.
“Bongos & Tambourines” smears Spiegel’s voice across a clanging beat of bells and marimba. The analog keys suggest early Cluster, but again the words feel clumsy with Spiegel’s pitchy delivery of “Bankers and robbers got hit by a cowbell/Bankers and robbers got hit by a snare.” Closer “Warmth (How Mean Is Mean?)” bears the album’s keenest melody courtesy of a violin playing a Middle Eastern scale as Spiegel sings of “the weirdest desire,” hinting that he may once again utter “I love you.”
Looped hand percussion and echoing chimes give “Wipe the Shame” a slightly different feel. But it’s this song that makes one wonder if the album is really about a failed relationship or else an ultimately untenable nation-state. Is Spiegel singing of love or something more oppressive when he delivers lines like, “Brutal oppress as self-defense... How can we take that man down”? There’s a kernel of protest to be had here, but it would resonate deeper with stronger lines and more assured delivery.
