- It's often felt like Darling Farah's music has failed to live up to the story behind it. In fairness, not much could: here was a young producer born on techno's home turf, Detroit, before moving to the United Arab Emirates, a country whose extreme cultural conservatism makes it tough to cultivate a club scene. It's the sort of tale of creativity in adversity that press officers dream of. But for me, the brand of windswept, dubby techno on last year's Body felt—well, just a tad dull.
Following a fairly lengthy silence, Metal Irene marks the moment when the now London-based Farah's music outstrips his biog. There's a newfound rawness and volatility to these tracks—qualities that are, granted, present in plenty of house and techno these days, but Farah approaches them in his own distinctive way. "Cloudy Apple"'s stodgy techno groove is beset by layers of throttled hiss and looped sounds sourced from arcade games. The result is menacing, but without recourse to techno's conventional shorthands for menace. "Speak On The Spotlight" and "Pieced Apart" are deeper; the latter is particularly fine, its layers of ghoulish dub textures rendering it bleak and strange. "Humming," a tape-muffled synth interlude, is a beatless respite. But "Lockhead" is the record's peak. For the most part it's just loping broken-beat kicks and a single pungent sheet of delay, until a red-raw clap snaps things into place at the four-minute mark. It's lean, rugged and ruthlessly efficient. When Farah dropped "Darling" from his name we should have known he meant business.
TracklistA1 Cloudy Apple
A2 Speak On The Spotlight
A3 Humming
B1 Lockhead
B2 Pieced Apart