On Garden of Love, Scratch Massive conjure a haunted beauty

The Parisian duo have been sending out shadowy, ghostly electro-dance transmissions going on 15 years. They’ve carved out a strong, unmistakable identity for themselves in France, where they were at the vanguard of the country’s techno scene in the early 2000s, and continue to be almost two decades later, laying down moody markers with each of their previous three albums.

Their fourth album is much of the same. It borrows its name from the William Blake poem, in which there was once a garden resplendently green, filled with the scent of sweet flowers, fully alive. Later, it’s reduced to a morbid place of darkness, one of death, where tombstones and prickly brambles suffocate any sort of joy or desire. And it would be an understatement to say that the album also borrows its character and soul from Blake’s poem as well.

The first four tracks all float along like some sort of spectre-like being, slowly emerging through a swirling fog – it’s no coincidence one of these is actually called "Fantôme X". The BPM count is at a low, giving the synths, in their various guises, room to hang and hover, and the guest vocals room to brood. There’s a tangible sense of foreboding and darkness to it all. It’s disquieting, but captivating, a duality that’s been at the core of Scratch Massive’s sound from the very beginning. Closing tracks Another Day and Feel the Void follow suit, BPM-wise that is, but there’s more light in their compositions, as if that swirling fog has now dissipated and brighter days lie ahead. Elsewhere, "Chute Libre", "Mono Arch" and "Pray" offer glitchy, dusky techno, a sound that while in stark contrast to the majority of this particular album, is bread and butter for Scratch Massive.

Garden of Love isn’t something for people that aren’t into their dance music. That’s a given. But even if you aren’t, one listen and you can appreciate just how good Maud Geffray and Sebastien Chenut are at what they do: conjuring a haunting beauty. That’s what they do, and they do it very well.