REVIEW: Luke Page - Modern Prayers

Here it is again - another two hour long, post-rock, electronica-inspired, avant-garde messterpiece. A work of art so close to the heart of its creator, they never stopped to think "should I release this" - such is the case with Luke Page's Modern Prayers.

This is an album that feels like it doesn't know where it's going. Sounds and ideas are never completely, just thrown up randomly and without rhyme or reason - sometimes in 5 minute loops, sometimes for a 20 second phase.

The album sounds stiff and inhuman, the drums are almost too on beat, the synths sound too good. A human element is lost to some of these songs, and left me feeling as though I had listened to something more akin to Minecraft - Volume Alpha than, say, Selected Ambient Works II. There's an almost vaporwave aesthetic to the entire thing, an unintentional lo-fi irony.

What could be short, but unassuming electronic loops and phrases are instead dragged over five minutes, seven minutes, ten minutes, and longer, until all bit of novelty from the songs is gone.

The album is full of blemishes of creativity (blemishes because of how much they stand out) such is the cases with the chopped and screwed spoken word intro to the 3rd track, which loops and layers and builds up similar to Neil Cicierga's Mouth Moods.

This is not to say that the album is completely unenjoyable, I began every song enjoying it, but would change my mind over time. With a fresh set of eyes and ears Luke Page could easily cut this down into an enjoyable EP, but as it stands now, the album is a mess of incomprehension and self-indulgence.

3/10

Listen here: https://slowhorsepublishing.bandcamp.com/album/modern-prayers