Escape from Witchtropolis

For his second Espectrostatic album, Alex Cuervo took a slightly different tack: where the project's self-titled first album could have been a collection of themes to different movies, Escape from Witchtropolis plays like a full-fledged soundtrack to a horror epic. This more cohesive approach means the album lacks some of Espectrostatic's eclectic charm, but Cuervo makes up for it with a set of songs with their own appeal. Building on his flair for inspired song titles — "The Feral Kids" is a creepy standout — he heightens his skills as a composer and arranger: "This Is a War Universe" embellishes the John Carpenter-esque pulsing synths that drove Espectrostatic with some dramatic counterpoint, and artfully buries a mysterious flute melody under drones that feel like the musical equivalent of quicksand on "Sinking into the Microverse." Winding keyboards are still the heart of Espectrostatic's music on Witchtropolis, and Cuervo uses them to even greater and more versatile effect on highlights like "The Obelisk," a fittingly mysterious-sounding combination of baroque melody and swampy bass, and "The Cold Spot," a haunted house of a track made all the eerier thanks to toy piano. While Cuervo's fondness for camp is well represented by the title track, which pairs a cool motorik beat with perky keyboards straight out of The Munsters, Escape from Witchtropolis is overall a darker and slightly more serious affair than Espectrostatic's debut; with its clanking beats and insistent bass, "She Hunts Them in the Afterlife" is downright gritty, and the album's finale, "The Goddamn Apocalypse," hints that the escape might not go so well. Often, Cuervo blurs the boundaries between filmic pop music and actual film music even more successfully than before: the unsettling "Abandoned Places" could easily appear on an actual score thanks to its expansive synth washes and fragmented piano melody. If this is Cuervo's audition for legitimate soundtrack work, he's ready.