Violet Arcana - In The Scene Of The Mind FLAC download

As reviewed by me in August 1994:Summary: Mellow, trancey, contemplative synth pop.With as much self-promotion Jeremy Wells and David Duddleston give their music on the Internet and the inclusion of an overwhelming number of photocopied media references in their promo pack, I couldn't help but expect this disc to be amateurish and poorly produced. Surprise! In The Scene Of The Mind is a refreshing collection of vocal-based songs with traditional structures drawing on ambient influences. To call Violet Arcana a synth-pop band would be inappropriate; there are no dominant melodies and they sound nothing like Erasure, for example. And the vocals are wisely processed and recorded low in the mix, allowing the listener who ordinarily finds vocals distracting (like myself) to ignore their contents completely and appreciate only their textural merits. The lyrics are contemplative, the music is hypnotic. The title track, although apparently a favorite with college radio stations, is the weakest cut on the album. The songs steadily improve as I work my way through the disc, and by the time the Weatherallian flange-o-rama "A Cause of This" hits me I'm left thinking "These guys are pretty good." Granted, it's not a masterpiece and it breaks no major barriers, but it is unusual enough and far enough above mediocrity to warrant a space on my Heavy Rotation This Month chart. Highlights are "A Cause of This", "Broken Apart", "Inward Sight", and the uplifting "Two Lives". "Facade" is 12 minutes of silence followed by half a minute of dubby noodlings. My only real complaint is that the album sounds a bit compressed. In The Scene Of The Mind contains significant bits of trance, ambient, pop and dub. I recommend it to fans of those styles who appreciate structure and continuity.