Information Society
Don't Be Afraid

The story of Information Society starts with synth-pop, an American band from Minneapolis, precisely, interpreting a typically English phenomenon. Compared to many of their British counterparts, the group led by Kurt Harland—whose career spans music and video games—offered a decidedly more groove-oriented and energetic approach compared to the plasticky and sweetly acrid new-romantic clichés typical of many British colleagues. "Something On Your Mind," their most successful single, is the perfect example, but this doesn't make Information Society a band of particular depth or relevance; that's definitely not what I want to talk about, but rather, their courage to reinvent themselves, their disregard for commercial success, and their ability to impart a qualitative leap to an artistic journey until then dispensable and surely doomed to oblivion.

The year was 1997, five years had already passed since the previous album "Peace And Love Inc.," where the idea of evolution from a synth-pop now considered antediluvian to dance-pop with techno nuances began to distinctly emerge. An operation attempted in the same years by Falco with his "Data De Groove," with the same commercial outcomes, namely nil. However, the moderate evolution expressed by "Peace And Love Inc." is eclipsed by the total change of direction, the revolution of "Don't Be Afraid." The transition to compositions averaging over six minutes, filled with industrial, techno, and EBM might almost seem like a leap into the dark, yet excellently executed and planned; there's not much surprise considering Kurt Harland's technological background, in fact, the only mastermind of "Don't Be Afraid" and the sole survivor of the group's original line-up. This album is an ambitious work, complex, yet easy to assimilate and very direct; essentially, it consists of deformed pop songs, enriched with orchestrations, synth bombardments, industrial beats; long and extended instrumental passages lend the work a particular cinematic impact, and after all "Don't Be Afraid" is conceived precisely as a soundtrack for the neuroses and paranoias of a degraded and degrading future. The musicality changes, but the scenario is completely comparable to that evoked by Killing Joke in "Extremities, Dirt And Other Repressed Emotions."

With such an elaborate, bombastic, and grandiloquent sound, this album might almost seem like the work of a paranoid and visionary clone of Jim Steinman; the martial and overbearing pace of "Empty 3.0", the triumphant and somewhat sickly thrust of "Closing In 2.0," the creeping tension of "On The Outside 2.1", the hypnotic chant with a vaguely hip-hop rhythm of "Ending World 1.1" and "Seek300 1.1", which sounds like the techno remix of an early Rammstein song, with the same muscular power. These five rocks, placed one after the other in rapid succession, form a powerful continuum, a viral infection of adrenaline; it's music that stirs, that increases the heart rate and pupil dilation, hence I strongly advise against listening to it while driving, especially in traffic, the effects could be exceedingly pernicious; add to this a fully energetic cover and electronic steamrollers of "Are Friends Electric?" by Gary Numan and the circle is complete.

"Don't Be Afraid" doesn't lack even a more psychedelic and alienating side; "The Ridge 1.1," a slow, melancholic, and dreamy track closes the album, stretching out over almost ten minutes, giving the impression of being the morning after a particularly vivid and intense dream, the sensations of Adam and Eve a moment after the expulsion from Eden, a feeling of disorientation in something vast and indistinct, a white light that irradiates and confuses everything. "Ozar Midrashim 1.1" instead is an instrumental where alienation reigns supreme, with distressing orchestrations, austere and solemn choirs, and relentless beats. Included in the soundtrack of "Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver," a video game to which I am very sentimentally attached, represents perfectly the infinite fall into a bottomless, oppressive abyss, an industrial nightmare revisited in a Gothic key; it is the perfect representation for a landscape of the soul, while "The Sky Away 2.0," interpreted by a sensual and sulfurous female voice is Kurt Harland's distorted ideal of paradise, on these solemn percussions, on this crawling and oblique pace, one can imagine an afterlife of absolute freedom, a parallel world with limitless possibilities.

In short, this "Don't Be Afraid" is an album that stimulates the imagination quite a bit, each song is a gem with multiple reflections, a trip that always offers some unexpected surprise, and in this, it reminds me a lot of "Unbehagen" by Nina Hagen. Kurt Harland's voice itself, absolutely nothing exceptional in a standard pop song, in this context appears absolutely perfect, that of a Virgil accompanying the listener into his personal parallel world, or a Mad Hatter master of ceremonies in a mad fantasy, if you prefer. However you want to frame it, "Don't Be Afraid" remains a stunning and breathtaking experience, the masterful ability to graft pop melodies into a context that is not even a little bit pop, the vividness of the soundscapes that imprint themselves on the listener's mind, not just on the ears, on multiple different planes. The work has its esoteric charm, its load of symbolism and metaphors; post-industrial ruins and strobe spheres, wastelands and fertile paradises, unexplored planets and traps of the mind.