The trumpets that permeate Teeth of the Sea’s fifth album act like the prophetic horns of Jericho. Laid thick with reverb, they herald the dystopian landscape the London-based trio create through nine tracks of scattering electronic percussion, earthy bass lines and eerie ambience.
Largely instrumental, Wraith plays more like a slab of techno experimentalism than the noise-based maw of their previous record, 2015’s Highly Deadly Black Tarantula. The brutality dissipates on opener I’d Rather, Jack courtesy of Italo disco synths pilfered from Erol Alkan’s Phantasy Sound studio, where this album was recorded. As Wraith progresses, club sounds morph into the jazz horns and dissonant bass of Hiraeth, before taking a breath in the brassy ambience of Burn of the Shieling.
Introspection encroaches, with Visitor playing like a Giorgio Moroder instrumental, while Her Wraith wouldn’t feel amiss on the lighter side of a Oneohtrix Point Never record. Generic dissonance becomes Wraith’s downfall, moving on too soon from the promising, pounding electronics of its opening numbers into a muddied wash of arpeggiated synths and percussive textures.
By closing track Gladiators Ready, the cold slap of Teeth of the Sea’s electronic drum programming returns, giving form to their sonic experiments. Yet it feels overdue after more than half a record spent plumbing meandering instrumentals. If they could bring a little more of their noise-based disruption into the mix, their prophetic horns would be worth heeding.