Clock Dva
Sign

At the conclusion of a trajectory that saw them hit at least two significant targets right between the late '80s and early '90s, Adi Newton's Clock DVA released their last official studio album, manifesting a certain aridity of inspiration; thus, closing their career as cyberpunk knights in a rather unremarkable way. "Sign" is a rather watered-down album, full of long-drawn-out ideas, unable to say anything original after the path marked by titles like "Buried Dreams". Titles that had defined an era, synthesizing the images of the dizzying contamination between cybernetics and mass culture that in just a few years had revolutionized the relationship between digital machines and humans. "Buried Dreams" and not only: "Man-Amplified", just twenty months before "Sign", had perfected - more in concepts than in the music itself - the mystical/profane vision of man inevitably tied to technology and destined to digitize his existence in some way.

"Sign" somehow attempts to bring the universe of new cultures to a more dreamlike and emotional level, rarefying the sounds and rhythms and aiming for less dazzling colors than those that had sculpted "Buried Dreams": with the result of producing a series of rather long and dilated tracks where repetitiveness - no longer nervous and pounding - loses its original effectiveness. Thus, from the dreamy melancholies of "Return to Blue" through cosmic hints with "Eternity" and metaphysical ones with "Pool of Shades", hypnotized by minimal cadences that echo coldly even when Newton's deep voice recites his litanies.

Clock DVA had grown in the crucible of Sheffield, mixing industrial precursors' experiments with other genres less usual in the indie scene (jazz, funk, etc.) and after the good performance of "Advantage" had consolidated with "Buried Dreams" their interest in the cyber trend, enjoying credit and notoriety for the electronic mélange with very captivating atmospheres and varied rhythms. Evidently, the link with that certain cultural and social moment was exhausted with the standardization of iconographies and even fashions, equally exhausting the public's interest in a context that musically needed to seek a turning point also on other shores (like EBM, for instance, or the various industrial fronts of Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly).

Overall, "Sign" fails to leave a mark, pardon the pun. The closing chapter of a cycle, it appears as a pasted-on swan song of a project that had a great global impact. Two listens and at most two tracks stick; on the third, you stop the CD halfway through and goodnight.