In 2021 Richard Fearless released the album Future Rave Memory. An unsettling, largely beatless, ambient set it amounted to a metallic, melancholy, dystopian epic. A caustic comment on societal decay. Now, reviving the alias Death In Vegas, Fearless has a follow up ready, Death Mask. Charting a journey from his birth to his father’s passing, the album is nowhere near as dark as its title would have you believe. 

In keeping with his label’s moniker, the music is still rooted in drone. It’s these that carry the melodies. Sometimes cinematic, always symphonic and highly emotive. Arrangements that dive-bomb, rise and fall, burning brighter with each fresh return, raising a raging, wrenching rush. Occasionally emitting spectral choir-like harmonies. The “noise” can be challenging, but the tone is not pessimistic, instead transcendental. Throughout there’s an uplifting, positive undercurrent. The sense of a determination strengthened by struggle. Resulting in a rave-rooted ritual to exorcise, dispel demons. 

With the exception of 2 of the tracks, everything here could move a (very open-minded) dancefloor. Rhythms range from rattling Drexcyian electro and pounding, pummelling pulses to thumping, thudding delayed tribal beats. In handle alone While My Machines Gently Weep could be an homage to Jamal Moss, who Fearless cites as an influence. Sonically too, though, there are strong similarities. Hammering out a funky arrhythmia, and then sending in speedy, shuffling percussion, along with a wall of feedback fuzz. Thunderclaps echo King Tubby’s manhandled spring reverb, concrete evidence that dub is another major inspirational source. There’s plenty of Echoplex, creating a sound dense with detail, and the album’s final mixdown was performed live at Fearless’ desk. 

Roseville’s racing sequences and furious, flickering frequencies increase in intensity creating something hypnotic and euphoric. Robin’s Ghosts is a menacing, acidic night drive through Babylon. Your Love boasts a big, more straightforward 4 / 4. Acid house adjacent, like Chris & Cosey jamming with Jamie Principle, it might not be cover of Principle’s Frankie Knuckles-championed Chicago classic, but they share the same simmering, sensual vibe. Whispering its name, it provides the long-player’s only vocals. 

Of the “ambient” moments, Chingola opens the album with distant, distorted strings. Fucked up, far way fanfares. Róisín Dub(h), where Dub(h), “Black” in Celtic and Gaelic, refers to shadowy studio trickery, is a scratched and picked, reverb-rinsed piece of grainy post-classical. Its deep-listening debris suggesting someone sifting through dim memories. Numb with melancholy, perhaps in a state of shock. In closing, the titular Death Mask returns to the cathartic, purging and purifying banging. Recalling Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia and spin-off Exquisite Corpse’s occult, ceremonial industrial techno and trance. 

Death In Vegas’ Death Mask can be ordered directly from Drone.