PIECES FROM A BROKEN STAR

CIELO DRIVE is the Krautrock meets post-industrial project of Óscar Sanfiz of Lugo, Spain and the project name refers to the street of the house address where actress and model Sharon Tate was brutally murdered in 1969 by members of the Charles Manson cult. PIECES FROM A BROKEN STAR is Sanfiz's debut album and likewise the title refers to the shocking incident that shocked the entire United States in 1969 when this took place. CIELO DRIVE has crafted a mesmerizing and terrifying series of soundscapes to evoke the horror of its namesake in this collection of ten tracks that are each named "Piece" such as "First Piece," "Second Piece" etc up to "Ninth Piece" with the grand finale the nearly 12-minute closer titled "STAR."

Óscar Sanfiz is the star of the show here and on this release plays guitars, bass, kalimba and samples as well as engineering sound manipulations and implementing other noise altering devices. He also includes vocals but these tracks are instrumental and any human vocalizations are purely used for sound effects after being processed to render them unrecognizable. Sanfiz is joined by Dirk Ittenbach on keyboards, swarmatron (wtf is that?) as well as adding his own samples. Drums, both normal and electronic are performed by Alberto Guillén. The album is a harsh one as the recording process makes use of saturated frequencies, glitches, extreme distortions and dark industrial sounds.

The soundscapes proceed somewhat like a post-rock album with a detached Krautrock style of spaciness as well as featuring a droning backdrop and dark ambient atmospheres. The album progresses very slow and methodically with incremental changes and musical elements buried beneath the layers of industrial monotony. As far as the Kraut influences go, the early Kraftwerk albums before the robot synth-pop days are what most strikingly comes to mind. The post-industrial may remind of not only Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV but the later works from SPK have been referenced and that would not be inaccurate however other modern acts like Natural Snow Buildings and Xiu Xiu also sound like their in the same camp on some of their albums.

PIECES FROM A BROKEN STAR was created with a cut-up technique that basically stitches together disparate sounds and places them into a free flowing stream of continuity which keeps the album very well paced with monotonous percussive beats and an incessant bleakness that take you deep into the world of melancholy and dejection. The album is extremely well produced and engineered and often sounds like a swarm of hornets from hell invading. Other than the closing sprawler, the tracks are fairly uniform in length therefore the album feels extremely balanced with each track ceding into the next in a logical if sadistic fashion as if delving into the psyche of the cult members' motives and how they derived satisfaction from snuffing out others.

Overall this is a highly satisfying soundtrack of doom that offers both slow plodding contemplative dread as well as more upbeat electro-industrial moments in the vein of classic Skinny Puppy although no vocals are really detectable as such on this wild ride. The soundscapes also feature grating guitar sustain and feedback which offers a nice touch to the already nerve racking irritability of it all. Industrial and post-industrial enthusiasts will absolutely love this one. While the Kraut elements are clearly in play they are implanted for the plodding nature of the rhythmic drive as well as some of the quieter spaced out motifs that serve as a breather from the otherwise grating doom-fest that constitutes PIECES FROM A BROKEN STAR. While such albums can prove to be boring for their simplicity, CIELO DRIVE offers a nice mix of styles and a stellar diverse roster of tracks that sit well next to each other. A true modern industrial gem for sure.