Vlimmer – XIIIIIIII (EP – Blackjack Illuminist)
Genre/Influences: Dark-Wave, Dark-Pop.
Format: Digital, CD, Cassette.
Background/Info: It took five years to German artist Alexander Donat to accomplish this phenomenal EP-series featuring eighteen releases. Here’s the last part featuring five more songs.
Content: This new EP sounds like a perfect twist between Dark-Wave and Dark-Pop music. It stands for the imaginary German version of The Cure. Well, I don’t want to say Vlimmer is a cheap Cure emulation, but some of the songs are for sure reminding the band of Robert Smith. This new work is more Electro-driven although achieved with guitar playing and supported with melancholic moods.
+ + + : Vlimmer held the best of his work for the end. “XIIIIIIII” is a cool production featuring a great debut song “Mängelexemplar” and a few other cool cuts like “Vorwehen” and “Kern”. The last mentioned song has been progressively built up, holding on the listener’s attention for more than 10 minutes and featuring a scary, haunting final part. I also enjoy the melancholic touch of the work, which in a way became this artist’s trademark.
– – – : Even if “Kern” is cool apotheosis, the debut part of this song is a bit boring so it needs some time to really realize how cool this song sounds.
Conclusion: If this is the last Vlimmer-EP from this impressive series I hope it will be not the last Vlimmer production ever.
Best songs: “Mängelexemplar”, “Vorwehen”, “Kern”.
Rate: (8).
Artist: www.facebook.com/VlimmerMusic
Label: www.facebook.com/Blackjack.Illuminist Read the news on ‘XIIIIIIII’.
About Vlimmer
Vlimmer is the shoegaze/darkwave project of Berlin-based producer Alexander Leonard Donat. Between 2015 and 2020 Donat released an eighteen-part EP series, closing it out with “XIIIIIIII”. After the series concluded, Vlimmer moved toward post-punk with the debut album “Nebenkörper” (2021), adding industrial and noise rock elements, followed by “Menschenleere” (2022) and the darkwave/post-punk/shoegaze/new wave album “Zerschöpfung”, released on Blackjack Illuminist Records with tribal drums running through the material. “XIIIIIIII” marks the closing chapter of the EP series that set that later album run in motion.
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