Port-Royal
Dying In Time

The anticipation for the new album by Port-Royal was intense, perhaps inspiring its name. Not due to any silence or delays—fortunately, they spoil us with gifts almost annually—nor because we were waiting on an assessment of a maturity they've already proven to possess, but to understand what new direction the Genoese group would take.

Over the years, their post-rock tinged with shoegaze, ambient, and Soviet moods has gradually intertwined with electronic influences. With an album called "afraid to dance," where for the first time danceable beats made an appearance in the most successful tracks—the stunning decada/enza, which has nothing to do with the nostalgic citationalism of the gaudy Ax—the fear of a potential tunza turn troubled the summer evenings of many aficionados.
In fact, it can be said there has been an evolution in this direction, but without compromising the group's aesthetic. The use of electronic beats has become less sporadic, sometimes even sustained, yet there are still slower, more expansive passages in which to catch one's breath.

The first tracks pick up the conversation where it was left off in 2007; it isn't hard to detect melodic lines from "Afraid To Dance" in some movements of "Nights In Kiev", but they are introduced in an unprecedented rhythmic context that culminates in the vigorous percussion of "Anna Ustinova". After a brief pause, the experiment resumes, altering the balance and positioning of sustained and relaxed phases from time to time (first as an introduction, then at intervals, and finally at the end of the tracks). Here, some attempts stand out with the song form—"The Photoshopped Prince"—and with the gracefully dance structures of the first single, "Balding Generation (Losing Hair As We Lose Hope)", united by both melodic completeness and at least bizarre title choices. The album closes with the classic "suite" divided into three parts of royal style, "Hermitage", varied and evocative, which, while not denying the introduced novelties, will not fail to satisfy the nostalgics of the "Flares" period.

Port-Royal’s music is descriptive, an uninterrupted dreamlike flow whose evocative power largely depends on synth patterns, and although excellent quality has been maintained, the risk is failing to provide individual episodes with a distinctive atmosphere that sets them apart and makes them unique.
But "Dying In Time" is a beautiful album: layered, with carefully measured rhythm, without particular drops and with some high-quality peaks. An album whose only challenge is to compete with previous works of equal merit from which it diverges more in terms of percussion usage than sound timbres.