After over 40 years as the driving engine behind bands ranging from short-lived endeavors to enduring U.K. hitmakers
Erasure
-- a time span that's included the release of dozens of his remixes and sideline experiments with collaborators like
Martyn Ware
and
Martin Gore
-- synth pop pioneer
Vince Clarke
presents his first solo album,
Songs of Silence
. At once hypnotic and adventurous, it's a set of mostly instrumental, ambient-leaning tracks, although far from homogeneous. Work on the album began during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when
Clarke
finally had the chance to experiment with Eurorack, an agile modular synthesizer format, in his studio. He made two rules for himself for these trials: the sounds had to come solely from Eurorack (he would make exceptions to this for the album cut), and each track had to adhere to a single key. He wasn't thinking of sharing any of the results at the time; it was
's label,
Mute
, that encouraged him to release an album. Some of the record's more ambient offerings include the drony opener, "Cathedral," which features slowly rising swells of shimmery tones over sustained bass notes. It also includes what sounds like spoken-word radio transmissions that dissipate seconds after being introduced. Other tracks under this general umbrella include the descriptively titled "Imminent" and the murkier "Passage," which features wordless, operatic vocals and late-arriving industrial percussion. Alternately, tracks like "White Rabbit" and "Mitosis" have bleepy, computer-like timbres and looped rhythms, with "Scarper" arguably being the closest thing to an actual club track here, with its relatively steady four-on-the-floor, additional tonal rhythms, and trance-like shimmer. While all ten tracks are somewhat muted and reflective in character, relative outliers include the expressive cello piece "The Lamentations of Jeremiah," which features
Reed Hays
' cello over
's Eurorack drone, and folktronica entry "Blackleg," which is based on the mid-19th century pro-union folk song "Blackleg Miner." "Last Transmission" closes
on an ominous note, with a scrambled sample cutting through layers of spacy sustain. Even considering its modest ambitions, it's probably not a surprise that
showcases instincts and inventiveness well beyond that of your typical synth-instrumentals diversion. ~ Marcy Donelson