Tunnel - Personas

A Closer Listen

What’s black and white and red all over?  The entire history of the webuildmachines label up to this point, which makes the new color palette of Personas all the more striking.  Ryan Miller is the label’s founder and flagship artist, typically known as Tunnel but often recording under aliases including Darkcloud, who makes a “guest appearance” here, justifying the title! For over a decade, Miller has been releasing techno-industrial albums and singles, but the power and elegance of this album makes it his finest work to date.  Not only is every track strong, but the set as a whole flows dramatically from beginning to end.  A perfect album for cruising down the highway or late night clubbing, it makes its point without ever being heavy-handed, and closes with words of hope.

The dystopian future is already here, and Personas is its soundtrack.  The semi-ambient opener “Our Utopia” is itself a commentary: is this the best we could have done?  As ambience turns to drone and an electronically-modified voice enters, one is already thinking of the dehumanizing effects of technology.  Making good use of that same technology, Tunnel programs an incredible array of beats and pads, these textures morphing and twisting, tying themselves into knots.  The sole vocal piece, “Lost in Shadows,” introduces Lilith Burke as serves as a second overture.  “I” shifts the attention from the human to the machine, a rapid-pace hybrid of IDM and industrial music that yields some of the album’s most intricate patterns.  If the machines are this capable, might humans be expendable after all?

The uncommon contribution of Tunnel is empathy.  For every hint of surveillance or advertising (“You Have Been Owned”), there is a reminder of higher values.  “Everyday, I Search” begins as a search for reason and purpose but ends as a search for love.  To be fair, it would be just as valid to consider the protagonist an A.I. expanding its horizons.  Either way, Tunnel honors it with a voice. “Lifestyle Choices” places Miller and Miller (as Tunnel and Darkcloud) in dialogue with each other, leading to questions about masks and disassociation.  Is the cover photograph the inner persona, the outer, a hybrid or an amalgamation?  The music changes persona as well, morphing into drum ‘n’ bass halfway through, a shift even stronger in the ensuing piece, in which the market seems to boast directly to the consumer, and in the frenzied, percussive “Control.”

And yet, as far afield as the music will travel, as many troubling realities that it acknowledges, the album remains hopeful.  The final image is of light discovered “after walking so long in darkness.” After so many false utopias, a real one has emerged: one the listener can only hope will emerge in real life as well.  (Richard Allen)