Orlando Gloom’s Wait For The Ark is music worth shouting about.
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With the passing of Silent Shout, sad, moody, electronic music like Orlando Gloom’s new EP, Wait For The Ark, lost an important outlet. No matter what the temperature was outside, Silent Shout was a sure bet for discovering chilly synths like those on “A Jarring Moment of Clarity” to help take the edge off.
Dave Shaw has been basking in the gloom for a number of years now, under a variety of monikers (Camp David, Glass Random, and Real Humans to name a few), but there’s a new element to his music that set apart Wait For The Ark that is best described as a cautious optimism. The lyrics to opening track “Something Overhead” are typically obtuse, but the underpinning theme finds Shaw acknowledging that “there’s something in the air”, something tangible and real (“I think I can taste it,” he sings) that he’s leery of messing up. It’s not clear on “Vague Recollection” whether he’s been successful or not (“It feels like a dream, you hold me together at the seams / so how do i get so distracted”).
What is certain is Shaw’s deftness at making cool, detached synth pop that’s effortlessly enjoyable. Wait For The Ark’s closing title track finds Orlando Gloom at his bittersweet best, featuring Shaw’s deep baritone overtop gauzy atmospheric synth swells set to a steady drum machine beat. Our friends at Silent Shout would no doubt agree: Wait For The Ark is music worth shouting about.
