Lansing-Dreiden - The Dividing Island

Genre rock Publisher Kemado External Links Lansing-Dreiden Official Kemado Website

The Dividing Island is the second full-length album release from Lansing-Dreiden, a multimedia company based in New York City. Formed in 2000, the group has an extremely high output, encompassing music recording and performance, video, photography, drawings, interior design, museum exhibits and even a newspaper entitled Death Notice.

The album leads off with the title track, a droning piece with heavy electronic percussion and keyboards which rather unexpectedly gives way to sixties-style heavy rock guitar and drums with soaring harmonies. "Cement to Stone" has a heavily psychedelic feel, built on an acoustic guitar riff with layered ethereal vocals. In fact, the song would not have been out of place on an early Moody Blues record, or even one by the Strawberry Alarm Clock. The psychedelic vocals pop up again and again on this album, most notably on "Our Next Breath." "One for All," on the other hand, has an early-seventies soul groove built into it, although the siren-type synth swoops are a bit of a distraction and the heavy electronic interludes tend to swamp the soul groove. Other tunes, such as "Two Extremes," "Part of the Promise" and "Our Hour," are more focused on keyboards and programmed percussion. The latter, especially, sounds like an early eighties Bowie outtake.

The most effective tracks tend to be the guitar-based ones, particularly the instrumental "Symbol of Symmetry," which features a heavily-processed melody over a cleanly-chorded and arpeggiated electric. The tune moves through several unexpected twists and turns through its two-and-a-quarter-minute length. "Our Next Breath," too, has a refreshing pop character. Contrast these with the closer, "Dethroning the Optimyth," which is a full-on electronic assault featuring heavy programmed drums and distorted metal-ish guitars.

One negative point is the complete lack of any information about the songs, the artists or who is playing what when. Indeed, it is not clear who Lansing-Dreiden even are. Some printed lyrics would have been welcome, as the words are quite hard to understand for more than a fragment at a time. Part of this has to do with the processing and layering of the vocals; with several vocal lines happening at once, they all tend to be indistinct. In addition, the busy instrumental backgrounds featured on many of the ten tracks have the effect of drawing attention away from the vocals. In any event, the lack of detail or information makes it hard to appreciate The Dividing Island on more than a macro level, which is a shame, since it is obvious that a lot of care went into this recording.