As far as I am concerned, anything odd is a good way to grab my ear, add to that a spoken word presentation and I am there with both ears. As such, I enjoyed listening to Promethean Lag (Fractured Tale #1) by Odonian Drifts, where swirling electronica combines with an elaborately worded monologue to offer a sense of atmosphere and intrigue.
The backstory is quite involved, so I will let Odonian Drifts explain "Promethean Lag is the lead track from the album ‘Earwitness on Trial’ — due for release early 2023. Drawing on English folklore around the green children of Woolpit and drowned town of Semerwater, the song welds traces of old balladry and hauntological electro to re-charge the cultural archive in the face of a digital ontology that would reduce it to a plenitude of dead letters. In keeping with the wider Odonian Drifts project, ‘Promethean Lag’ engages with the question of how ethical responsibility and hospitality towards others might abide amid the wreckage of austerity 2.0, while attesting to the priest and philosopher Ivan Illich’s warning, back in 1982, that the “sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical.”
Odonian Drifts is the solo project of I.S. Rowley, who also writes/performs as one-fifth of post-punkish outfit Spirits in the Pillar. Songs on the forthcoming album were composed, recorded and produced in a loft flat in Nottingham, UK.
Review by Skreen B