Album Review: Cleopatrick - 'Fake Moon'
Toronto duo return with their low poly 8-bit bite of doom and sadness in Fake Moon.
When you first stick on Fake Moon, no one can judge you for thinking your speakers were playing up. Ian's fat snare spikes and Luke's glitched guitar throws have become a staple to the duo's sound since their tenure. The mammoth debut of BUMMER soon jettisoned the duo as one of the most in-demand rising rock bands on the planet. It was an exciting time to see such a wall of noise being made from two guys in their basement - and it wasn't going to be ignored forever.
The turning point came in 2022's EP Doom, with the likes of OK and SCARING ME featuring. This is when we were hearing a different side to the band; a more contemplative approach to sound and structure, as opposed to a consistent four-to-the-floor extremity as before.
With what can only be described as the audio equivalence to the retro gaming greats like Tony Hawk and Gran Turismo 2 , the boys' orbital direction into their next is certainly a far cry from their blistering BUMMER debut in 2021. In its stead, is a far more honest and mature reprise. Gone are the youths on stand-out youth in 2018 - we've got cleopatrick truly going through the motions here. Avert your eyes if you were wishing for a BUMMER 2 - these musicians have simply outgrown their former outfits. Besides, a carbon copy of an album that had said everything it needed to say just wouldn't have felt honest.
Quarrelling with power and vulnerability, FAKE MOON serves up bit-crunched guitars, wavy synth lines and glitched vocals in an album that sees them embark on something far more adventurous than they've encountered before. Shaped in lo-fi grit, the record plays into this "fake moon" - a sinister CCTV surveillance looming us over us like some big shadow. It's this raw paranoia of power that the record navigates all the while acting in an individualistic defiance towards "the man". Initially inspired by the wasps disguised as cameras in 2003 vintage The Simpsons: Hit & Run, it soon developed into something far more anxiety-inducing - and far too real.
The record kicks things off with Heat Death, a repetitive low-res guitar scrunches as if stuck in a cutscene, before Luke Gruntz's vocals boot us up forward into a resolution. Pangs of guilt are mirrored on BAD GUY, the gloomy lead single fends off gritty synth and haunting guitar swoons. In the video for it, sees Ian and Luke run away from the aforementioned "fake moon" in a low-poly fever dream. Existential crisis abound. It's brave and spunky - and you can't deny it's concept is an original one.
Softdrive plays like the loading screen motif or the 8-bit start-up lobby game start-up, while Chew rounds out like the sad shoegaze-y end credits, reminiscent of Pinegrove and Duster. As the album loiters through, we begin to lose the glitchy crunches of the earlier sounds and start to hear more "conventional" production from the studio maestros. Big Machine plays into that fragility and defiance tennis match, tossing up the fact that rebel may very well be imminent against the natural satellite in the sky. The self-titled track brings the listener back to the 8-bit retro soundtrack; almost as if we're now lost to it ourselves. Ignorance is bliss - and so is this sound design. Whatever you say about its songs and simplicity, it sounds fantastic. As LOVE YOU signals the end, you now know very well that your speakers are working just fine.
The boys sophomore is an shoegaze scope of a concept almost flawless in execution. A melancholic sound that is best enjoyed staring at ceilings at 3am. This is cleopatrick with FAKE MOON.
The tour begins post-release with sold-out dates in Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham lined up before finishing the UK leg of the tour with a night to remember at Electric Brixton on the 29th of this month.
Words by Alex Curle
