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THE DIVIDING
BY MICHAEL FREEDBERG
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This darkwave debut from Android Lust is a vehicle for the voice of Shikhee, a young woman of Bangladeshi origin who now lives in the US. Her goal seems to be to connect with that part of everyone that feels freakish, and she achieves it because her mousy pipsqueak of a voice cuts like a laser beam through the assorted murk of ghost-movie orchestrations, dark down-tempo rhythms, raspy electronica, echo effects, and droopy drumming. This kind of goth music is often thick with suffocating electronic effects that overwhelm the vocals and the lyrics, and the result can be camp. In Shikhee’s songs, however, the costume drama opens up just enough to focus your attention on her voice, which in "Kingdom of One," "Another Void," "Panic Wrought," "The Want," "Stained," and "Sex and Mutilation" has a lot to say about topics ranging from sex to world domination, emptiness, doubt, and unanswerable questions.
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