TORBA – II | Album Review

From harsh distorted nightmare to ethereal lullaby the new record from TORBA has it all.

Lockdown projects became a necessity during the pandemic and TORBA (the brainchild of Italian producer Luigi Pianezzola) is no different. Nothing prepares you for the disgusting blown out kick drum sounds that assails from the off. This is a concise 30 minutes of devastatingly heavy darkwave that is sure to knock the Christmas cobwebs out and force a bop to ignite the new year.

This is a record that is built around the extreme, the undone and the unnatural. TORBA often starts the process of writing new material by using deliberately out of tune instruments to, in Pianezzola’s own words, “I see it every day – people not making extreme decisions anymore. They record the stuff clean, and then they try to find the tone during the production, I always try to do the opposite.” The project is in itself a rejection of the neat little boxes that can sometimes wind up being the end game in the production of modern music.

Nothing encapsulates this extreme opposite approach than the track ‘DARE’ with it’s distorted euro dance vocals simmering beneath the surface of the classic drum beats. This is a song that creates a sense that it’s already played all over the biggest darkest clubs in Europe. It does also evoke a heavy dose of that scene from Blade where the nightclub is drenched in blood, but what darkwave doesn’t?

However there is some levelled tranquility lingering on the record with the ethereal stylings of ‘Rider’, a relaxing and almost cathartic outro to the pounding off kilter nature of the rest of the tracks. The song lulls you with its transfixing lullaby. In fact all of the songs that come after interlude have this sense of ghostly airiness to them, like a turning point in the record. The instruments are no less blown out and out of tune or extreme, but the music overall takes on a calmer tone more akin to classic house than the darkwave techno that came before it.

II is the second record released by TORBA and whilst it’s not perfect (it lacks a little dynamism at times due to the punishing nature of the drums) it sees Pianezzola really flexing their muscles, and pushing the barrier between the often overdone and the extreme, that produces a challenging piece of music that winds away it’s run time with no issue at all. It’s one of those records where it needs a few goes through to grasp everything that’s going on, the first playthrough comes and goes in such a whirlwind that the nuances can be lost, and that’s not something that should be left to chance.