TESSERACT - Subtronics

At the very least, I can say that Subtronics' sophomore album is a step up from his debut.

"TESSERACT" is the second studio album from mainstage dubstep artist Subtronics, and yes, I do think he's done a better job on this one than on "FRACTALS". Let's start off with the positives: the biggest thing I noted about "TESSERACT" was its creativity in its individual tracks. Whilst Subtronics is known for his stomping briddim, he attemps to branch out his sound to more experimental ideas, and for a decent proportion of the album, he succeeds. The drum n bass banger in "Only Star You See", the tech house cut in "Dreams (Plasma Reflex)", even the unusual blend of dubstep, UK drill and lo-fi in "Afternoon Coffee (Slide)", I have to say I enjoyed plenty of these outlandish ideas that normally wouldn't be given playtime in a project by most other artists in the festival-driven scene Subtronics inhabits. The innovation and switchups are a definite improvement over his debut album "FRACTALS", I'd say, and I'm all for it. There are some pretty quality tracks here, and although the mixing and mastering is... questionable... on a few too many cuts, the ideas are there and the production is there to match it. For about half the tracks. The other half takes everything "FRACTALS" did badly, and makes it worse. Well, in fairness, "TESSERACT" feels ever so slightly more cohesive than its predecessor in its sci-fi vocal samples, but that's grasping at threads, and in the grand scheme of things, it does practically nothing to establish itself as a cohesive record. What's worse on "TESSERACT" is the magnitude of the gap between the best and the worst tracks. Where the top of the pile is creative, engaging, and entertaining, the bottom of that pile is painful to listen to. Mixing causes issues, impact is often lost, generic ideas made my eyes roll — but the worst offender, arguably, is the fakeouts, most of which are just far too long and tiring to provide the wow factor to the drops, a wow factor that they're supposed to provide yet instead achieve the complete opposite effect.

Looking at the rating, though, some would say I've overvalued the uniqueness of the few, yet I disagree. "TESSERACT" hits the same lows as "FRACTALS" does", and the discrepancy between high and low is even greater, and yet the highs hit so much higher that it felt only right to bump this one up a tier into the 60/100 category. Subtronics has gotten some of the diversity he needed — not all, mind you — but he still lacks the engagement, cohesiveness, and production polish, problems which "FRACTALS" also faced, and so "TESSERACT" ends up being an album that struggles.