Darkstar – Foam Island

Music With Content

The third album from Darkstar, Foam Island, layers Darkstar’s electro rhythms with interviews with young people in Britain. From the interviews and bits of newsfeed given, a documentary-like story begins to develop on the trepidation that the younger generation has with the current state of their government. With the current setup of government, it seems that this generation does not have the platform in which to express its own voice and opinions, so Darkstar is giving them that platform. Foam Island becomes an experiment in the combination of the political and the aesthetic, showing art’s ability to push into circles where it is not always found.

“Basic Things” starts off the album and introduces the listener to the intersection of documentary and music that will be present, with its overlapping cycling of interviews on top of each other, just to warm everything up. For the rest of the album, there is a back forth between these interview pieces and Darkstar’s music. “Pin Secure,” a piece that was released ahead of the album, really does stand out from the rest with it being the only song that has more of an R&B quality to it. The lyrical content of “Pin Secure” is probably the best on the album, making the song seem like it was one of the most thought through pieces for Foam Island.

Overall, Foam Island has a good variety in its rhythmic beats and the genres it dips its toes into and it does all this while staying to its minimalist intentions. Unfortunately, though, through most of the progression of the album there is a lower level quality. The beats become choppier, no longer artistically spastic, and the intersections of the interviews get a little clumsy and sloppy. Not everything on the album is a total loss and Foam Island probably would have come off better as an EP rather than a full-length album.