Credit: Found On Internet

I am ashamed that this review has slipped through the cracks, when Alec Empire has been one of those acts that has been buzzing in my brain since the late 1990s. Oh I could blame all sorts of conflicting press releases and guff like that, but the simple truth is I took my finger off the pulse.

Which is something Empire has never done – albeit the pulse he has his finger on is altogether more esoteric than the rest of us could recognise. Putting seminal label Digital Hardcore on temporary hiatus in order to release this under his new Eat Your Heart Out label, it’s a distinct departure from anything else in Empire's canon of work. Gone isthe white-noise assault of Atari Teenage Riot. Gone is the electro-rage of his solo record Intelligence and Sacrifice. Gone is the looped punk-rock styling of its follow-up, Futurist. What we have in The Golden Foretaste of Heaven is something completely new.

Fitting then, that the record should open with ‘New Man’. Like a more euphoric Gary Numan, it sees Empire both reborn and still very much the electronic pioneer he has always been. While the shadows of his past as a extreme noize pioneer are there, whispering on the edges, the sheer accessibility of the track feels almost alien

The ethereal, almost tender minimalist techno of ‘1000 Eyes’ is a slow-moving, brooding epic, that at over 7 minutes long draws you in, feeling at first claustrophobic but then optimistic. Part-introspective journey, part-musical coda for Blade Runner, it’s the kind of mesmerizing track that shows just how avante-garde electronic music can be without becoming so obtuse that only the poseurs and too-cool-to-like-anything-with-an-actual-tune types can listen to is.

There’s an intangible element of Berlin to this record. It’s something that defies putting into words – we’re coasting the very edge of Lester Bangs’ “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” territory in this review – but whether it’s the almost-kitsch Velvet Underground inflections of ‘Robot L.O.V.E’ or the huge buzzing synths of 'Death Trap in 3D', there is an escapist element to this record that defies cheap metaphors and all those other journalistic attempts to capture its sound in the written word.