Rona Rougeheart is certainly not one to get bored: with SINE, the Austin-based artist continues to experiment and develop her synthetic soundscape, full of contrasting moods, with a steady stream of releases. Having compiled the two Mantis EPs into an album and released Luxuria, the collaborative EP with Claus Larsen (Leaether Strip), and following several remix albums and EPs, La Mordre is in fact her first “proper new album” in quite some time.
Her style is becoming more refined and defined: with SINE, she describes her music as “electronic boom” – it has to pulsate, it has to make you want to move. There’s a sense of seduction and accessibility, with basslines that rumble and draw us into a futuristic aesthetic made up of dangerous, biting promises. Yet La Mordre begins by blurring the lines, between the simmering threat of Goddess’and the melancholy of Perilized, which veers almost towards witch-house with its sinister, lullaby-like chorus. Beware, this dancefloor is filled with ghosts and traps concealed by the smoke machines!
As we mentioned earlier, SINE loves contrasts. An industrial chill, a few EBM influences and a taste for shadows, harshness, edge and venom give La Mordre its full impact: you’ll be dancing, but it might just be for the last time! Do you appreciate the strangeness that emanates from Succumb to Me? The track was co-produced with Curse Mackey (ex-My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult) and is symptomatic of Rougeheart’s approach on La Mordre: playing with sounds, twisting them, torturing them, caressing them, sculpting them, positioning them. As the album unfolds, you almost feel as though you’re witnessing her tinkering live – a playful aspect reminiscent of a mad scientist’s experiments, yet never losing sight of the pop touch, the urge to sway in the dark.
Admittedly, La Mordre no longer possesses the coldness of INSOMNIÆ or Desire, Denial and Paramania. With Trauma Bondage, Blood+Wine and the haunting, sarcastic Cruel, SINE has chosen singles that grab your attention, with beats that get bodies moving. In the shadows of the album, we also savour the synthesizers’ ability to hypnotise us when the tempo slows and the feverish intensity gives way to a cold, heavy atmosphere. For example, the sepulchral Immortal Disco, with its gothic echoes, has that slightly retro-futuristic, nocturnal and vampiric romantic touch that makes you desperately want to drink the blood of haggard revellers wandering beneath the blinding spotlights! Perhaps La Mordre’s greatest strength lies in its evocative power, in the darkness, nuances and mysteries that conceal the machines, intriguing and drawing the listener towards a fatal destiny, trapped in a web from which one has no desire to escape anyway.
