X Marks The Pedwalk – New / End (Album – Meshwork Music)
Genre/Influences: Electro-Pop, Body-Pop.
Format: Digital, CD.
Background/Info: X Marks The Pedwalk this year celebrates its thirty fifth anniversary. Sevren Ni-Arb and Estefania also released the newest opus of their sonic brainchild which is the eleventh album in history.
Content: Two years after “Transformation” XMTP moves on exploring Electro-Pop paths. The songs are supported with wafting atmospheres, creating a deeply space-like effect. A few ‘harder’ cuts remind us this band always has had something to do with dancefloor music. These tracks are carried by solid, EBM-orientated bass lines. Estefania remains the main singer although Sevren Ni-Arb is still singing on a few songs.
+ + + : Hard to say if I prefer this album to “Transformation” which I personally considered as the most accomplished production from the band’s Electro-Pop era. I like this new work for its subtle arrangements and global sound treatments. You can hear it in a few details and that’s precisely what makes this band different from the ‘average’ Electro-Pop formations. XMTP is not dealing with catchy melodies but privileged the atmospheric side or accentuated songs with darker bass lines and danceable kicks. “Kill Me Tonight”, “Yesterdays” and “Into The Light” are brilliant exposures of the composer’s talent.
– – – : The album only features 9 songs and that’s maybe a bit too short. I’m not that fond of the ‘softest’ cuts which however inject diversity in the tracklist.
Conclusion: X Marks The Pedwalk remains a warrant for creative and exciting Electro-Pop music. “New / End” is a styled piece of Electronics.
Best songs: “Into The Light”, “Kill Me Tonight”, “Yesterdays”, “Wonder”, “Miss Me”.
Rate: 8½.
Artist: www.x-mtp.com / www.facebook.com/xmarksthepedwalk
Label: www.meshwork-music.com / www.facebook.com/meshwork.music Read the news on ‘New / End’.
About X Marks The Pedwalk
X Marks The Pedwalk was founded in Germany in 1987 by Sevren Ni-Arb, born André Schmechta, and Regan Eracs, born Jörg Böhme. Early releases appeared on Talla 2XLC’s Zoth Ommog, with North American editions on Cleopatra and Metropolis.
The 1990 to 1996 run included the albums “Freaks”, “Human Desolation”, “The Killing Had Begun”, “Meshwork” and “Drawback”. After a hiatus the band returned with “Inner Zone Journey” in 2010 and continued with “The Sun, The Cold and My Underwater Fear” in 2012, “The House of Rain” in 2015, “Secrets” in 2017 and “Transformation” in 2020. Since the mid-2010s releases appear on Schmechta’s own Meshwork Music, and the current line-up is Sevren Ni-Arb and Estefanía, based in Münster, Germany.
“New / End”, the eleventh studio album and the one reviewed here, was released on 29 April 2022 and holds nine tracks running about 38 minutes. Sevren Ni-Arb wrote and produced it, it was recorded and mixed at F.8, and Olaf Wollschläger mastered it at Cottonbeat Studio. “Superstition” followed in 2023.
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