In his brief career to date d'Eon has marked himself as a curious prospect. He is part of an exciting new scene of mostly electronic musicians in Montreal; including Purity Ring and Grimes (with whom he released a split EP last year). Like those two artists, d'Eon's approach has an esoteric bent to it, and on his new full-length, simply titled LP, he investigates two extremes of spirituality: He explores ideas of tradition and religion, pitting them against a modern self trapped at the top of a Facebook profile or communicating via iPhone.
For the most part, the questions LP poses are the ones you might ask yourself everyday when turning on your computer, but they also seem to be issues that haven't been explored that much in music. James Ferraro pushed some of the same buttons on last year's Far Side Virtual, but Ferraro's approach felt a bit more ironic, or tongue-in-cheek. d'Eon's struggle with the online world and spiritual identity seems to come from a place of real soul-searching.
The near-10-minute closing track, "Al-Qiyamah", is a high point, and the most successful illustration of d'Eon's concept. He frames the track with a question right away: "If we're stuck in here, what happens on Judgement Day?" It's a dramatic sentiment but one equally applicable on a small scale, too: At what point does "real life" intersect with online life? The track is held together by some of the best production on the record: Swirling, iridescent synths keep pushing with forward motion before a breakbeat consumes the song at its halfway point. That beat eventually degrades, sounding almost like a chip tune by the time it rubs against a new age synth line at the end. Fittingly, it ends with the static of a phone signal interrupting a speaker frequency.
Elsewhere, the density of LP does the record no favors-- it clocks in at a mighty one hour and 13 minutes-- and you almost wonder if there's some sort of meta point being made about saturation on the internet. Musically, LP isn't strong enough to sustain this weight, and the length makes what should be an interesting concept seem at times rambling and forced. Songs like "Transparency Pt. II" drag things down especially-- scanning like a babbling Tumblr entry and tapping into a Kevin Barnesian level of unearned excess. As such, LP's a little frustrating. There are some challenging and interesting ideas at its core along with spots of very good production, but ultimately the lack of self-editing makes the sprawl too difficult to truly access.
