William Carlos Whitten/Diana Crash - Telepaths

 Released: August 3

Telepaths is a delightfully weird, raw, and unpolished album released on I Heart Noise. It’s an interesting mix of influences that includes some experimental and found sound type of techniques wrapped up in an approachable indie rock wrapper. A big part of what hold this album together is the stripped down vocals f Diana Crash as they take much of the focus here for most of the tracks with relatively little processing throughout. “Proletarians of Love” present kind of an exception this though as her vocal come rushing in under a scratchy and rough pretext telling us about how we get our love from a machine, which is quite a line that feels a quite salient considering the everything going on. 

Outside of the vocal, Bill Whitten appears to be the main force behind the music as he dips fingers and toes into a lot of different styles. Lots of fun an odd synth sounds that hearken back to a vaporwave kind of aesthetic but also plenty of drum and guitar pieces that give me latter era Cure and Siouxsie vibes, most notably on a track like “Elegie pour la Musique Rock.” The treatments on the guitars here are immaculate as they play along with very free swinging feeling. Then there’s moments like “Chaffuer at the Speed of Light”  which eschews any of these goth rock inspired guitars and takes us on a trip that feels like its halfway between a pop ballad and spaced out jam until it’s oddly abrupt end. 

Overall, Telepaths really has some immaculate vibes. The sheer range of moods is pretty amazing and the fact that it manages to stay in it, reasonably scuffed up, indie rock wrapper makes it all the more interesting. It manages to keep enough of an experimental approach while making something that feels like it is vaguely familiar.