The Third Eye Foundation – The Dark

The Dark represents the return of Matt Elliot’s ‘The Third Eye Foundation’ moniker. Although spread over 5 tracks, The Dark is a compelling and accomplished record that takes the listener on a long and often unsettling journey through many genres and touching on all of the key elements of Elliot’s recorded output over the years.

The suite begins with ‘Anhedonia’, a minimal piece that starts with the sound of a piano, gently playing and decaying, as shuffling beats churn underneath, rising and falling and giving way to more electronic delays and sub bass building as distorted horns and an operatic croon swirl around each other, the sounds decaying and echoing around, layer building upon layer to add to the darkly atmospheric and claustrophobic nature of the piece. ‘Anhedonia’ continues into ‘Standard Deviation’, the transition marked by a deep bass rumble that continues- the jittering beats and acid decays of the electronics coming further to the forefront, in turns dubby and progressive, the beats becoming faster and more concentrated half way through the track. Guitars rail around in the background, and odd sounds and wails hush and blur behind increasingly insistent beats as Elliott builds the music before releasing tension in ‘Pareidolla’. This movement revolves around a string loop, upon which Elliot slowly builds a nagging sub-bass riff and rapidly builds the tempo until the beats, strings and murmurs begging to blur, become discordant with one another and create a headlong rush to the end of the track.

Despite the brooding, claustrophobic atmosphere Elliott creates, his ability to fuse pulsating, stuttering electronics and twisted soundscapes to a more classically influenced sound. This ability to fuse the mechanical with the pastoral is very much in evidence on the elegiac ‘Closure’, whose combination of mournful strings and looping, spinning electronics gives an uplifting feeling, even as it becomes more hectic towards the tracks close. This momentary lightness allows the record a momentary pause, and prevents the intensity of the record from being overbearing. Given the feeling of resolution created by ‘Closure’ , it is somewhat of a surprise that it is not the closing moment of the record. That honour falls to ‘If You Treat Us Like Terrorists, We Will Become Terrorists’, a tumbling drum and bass that is decidedly ‘harder’ than anything else on the record, guitars and noise building to a dense wall of noise while the regimented beats clatter our there rhythm. In it’s own right the track is a success, although its more immediate and in your face nature does seem against the flow of the rest of the record.

The Third Eye Foundation’s return is an insistent, dark and complex record that, with repeated listens, proves itself to be strangely beautiful, uplifting record by an artist close to the height of his powers.