Espectrostatic

This self-titled debut for punk/garage rocker Alex Cuervo’s latest electronic music project might draw comparisons to John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream with its cinematic scope and dramatic electronic vistas. Cuervo, however, treats each of his pieces as a “song” in the two- to three-minute format. This doesn’t mean his instrumentals are built on conventional hooks or that the songs are mere backing tracks waiting to be used as karaoke; they’re fully executed instrumental works. But they do use a pop song’s sense of dynamics, so when Cuervo plugs into “Smokeface Appears,” the tension builds as if we're hearing a composer who’d spent much of his prior life writing compact rock/pop songs. No 10-minute epics for him. Cuervo’s résumé includes This Damn Town, Blacktop, The Hex Dispensers, and Feast of Snakes, and while Espectrostatic sounds nothing like those groups, the concise power of “Doomed Lovers in a Gathering Storm” and the Lost Highway menace of “Phantom Swarm” pack a considerable punch that he learned in the trenches of pleasing audiences.