The Rorschach Garden with Neatless
Neatless Voyage
Rorschach Garden Records
Not content with expanding beyond his long-standing (mostly) solo project The Rorschach Garden to develop a host of other side hustles, Phillip Münch (who made his bones as one half of powernoise legends Synapscape) is now crossing the streams. The neat_less project, which made its debut two years back and showcased an icy and mean style of EBM and dark electo on last year’s solid Defeat The Monsters, pointed to a style that took neither from the dense noise of Synapscape nor the nostalgic synthpop commonly associated with The Rorschach Garden. Now, with Neatless Voyage, credited as a collaboration between those two solo projects, Münch splits the difference between neat_less’ more aggressive style and Rorschach Garden’s bubbling synths to produce an uneasy and cautionary listen.
The tension between the lithe bounce of opener “A New Edition” and the more grinding texture of its bassline and Münch’s foreboding vocals about the current age of uncertainty is a solid guidepost for the dynamic Neatless Voyage treads. Finding a middle ground between classic influences like Snowy Red and The Klinik, it points both to Münch’s comfort with soft and harsh synth sounds from across his career, but also the fact that forms like synthpop, EBM, and dark electro all have shared roots if you trace them far enough back and, moreover, have the chops for curation, editing, and sound design of someone with Münch’s pedigree. The sleazy, lo-fi Soft Cell synth horns on “Praying Mantis” only similarly serve to underline how much meanness there is in the rest of the track’s robotic EBM funk.
If those sorts of vintage callbacks are a good portion ofNeatless Voyage‘s music delivery, there’s certainly nothing vintage about its themes. The speed with which Münch turns out his solo work allows for him to address a plethora of historical moments and crises as they happen. When says “everything was normal, everything was safe until the last election”, it’s unclear whether he’s referring to the cascading shitshow of the second Trump presidency or the German federal election in which the Nazi-riddled AfD advanced its position…which happened literally one week before Neatless Voyage was releases. Regardless, the running theme of masses opiated into inaction as all manner of horrors unfold doesn’t have to be tied to one specific government or recent disaster; lord knows there’s more than enough existential dread to go around these days.
Lighter moments like “Get Physical” and “Just Drifting” ease up on both the musical and lyrical tension, but they’re the exception to the rule (whether or not their liquid arpeggios could fit into The Rorschach Garden’s existing remit or whether another moniker is needed is a question for another day). Regardless of the name(s) under which this particular iteration of Münch’s take on dark, quirky synthesis has been released, he’s once again shown himself to be capable of honing in on just about any point on that spectrum.
