Roman Revutsky and the Kara Sea - Building Bridges Volume 1

It is immediately apparent on listening to Building Bridges, that this is music that works in theory, but somehow misses the point in performance. Roman Revutsky presents an interesting take on the current 1980s synth revival, creating an otherworldly soup that hopes to stray into Sigur Ros' ethereal and dreamlike territory. It is most unfortunate then, that the artist has chosen to drown his barely intelligible vocals beneath an overpowering weight of synthesised sounds. The outcome is a muddy, messy, confused collection of tracks that do not seem to lead to any sort of conclusion, particularly when the laptops are abandoned in favour of the omnipresent acoustic guitar strumming and ineffective, thin female vocals. [Lucy Weir]