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Rating: Chris Carter returns with a new solo album, his first in 17 years, but during all this time, the musician and producer, a key member of Throbbing Gristle, has never been far from the scene and has always produced high-quality albums, alongside Cosey Fanny Tutti, released under various aliases, from Carter Tutti to Chris & Cosey, as well as several other collaborations in the experimental and electronic scene. The English artist has always represented the more musical aspect of the projects he was involved in, and while Genesis P-Orridge was the destroyer or shaman, and Cosey pushed her provocation often on the sexual aspect, Carter was instead the musical soul, the sound experimenter, and the one who has always worked on creating instruments and sounds. Recently, he also designed a Eurorack module, The Gristleizer, an analog synth with multiple filters based on a DIY electronics scheme used for the instrumentation of Throbbing Gristle.
These "chemistry lessons" are instead closely linked to the latter part of Chris Carter's career, but less retro and 80s compared to Carter Void Tutti, just to give an example, more focused on composition, with roots in Brian Eno's avant-garde and ambient. The work is rich, with over 25 tracks where sound is always the central element, with careful use of filters and arpeggiators as in "Blisters" or "Nineteen 7" that bring to mind the sounds of the never forgotten Drexciya even if here the beat is lower and there are no dance intentions. In "Cernubicua" we then find a seemingly female voice, filtered and treated as if it were that of Karin Dreijer Andersson from The Knife, but only by reading the credits do we discover that it is a studio assembly between the voice of Chris Carter and that of the late Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, a historical member of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic Tv.
The album continues with an always direct and instinctive approach, rarely do the tracks last more than three minutes, as if to concentrate the ideas or simply leave them in their primordial state, without exaggerating in production phase. The impression is that the tracks were also made with the intent to become soundtracks, as in "Field Depth", where everything is played in function of a crescendo, as if to accompany an action or camera movement. However, this production choice does not detract from the value of this record, and if it is true that in today's film productions we can find several tracks of this genre, few have that attention to microscopic details, in rhythmic and melodic development, and not least, in the use of original sounds that do not come from the usual commercial orchestral sample libraries.
"Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons Volume One" is first and foremost a synth album, for those who love instruments and know them also in their functionality but also for anyone who loves this kind of sound, from soundtracks to the classics of "kosmische musik" like Tangerine Dream, an album that feels analog but not vintage, because Carter continues to carry forward in parallel artistic research and sound construction.
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