Artist: Trust
Album: Trust
Label: Arts and Crafts
Rating: 7

Ever since Vangelis scored Blade Runner, we knew that the future was going to be filled with replicants and electronic music. We still had a few more eras to get through till we got to the late 90’s when the techno revolution happened. Like most revolutions it seemed like it failed at first, but until now it seemed as if it wasn’t going to accomplish anything progressive in the grand musical landscape. There are several quality young electronic bands though that have emerged recently, and I don’t doubt that they were influenced (either negatively or positively) by that techno era.

Trust is a project created by Toronto natives Robert Alfons and Maya Postepski. TRST is an album that is easily accessible with its poppy beats and spacey atmosphere. It’s simple, which is a large part of its charm, and you’d expect that from a young band. Although they did originally form in 2009, so like many bands that have come before them, they took their time making their first album, and the results show from a sound that is patient in its progression. It’s not trying hard to do anything too radical it just
sticks to a simple formula and extrapolates off of it. For so many bands it’ll be Trust’s follow up that’ll determine the ultimate future of the group. If they were smart they should do something like release an EP before the end of the year to start a new chapter in their songwriting. It’s not that big of a risk, because if it’s only 2 or 3 songs, they can use time to evaluate if they need to go in a different direction.

The main beef that I have with TRST, besides the fact that it may end up sounded dated in a few years, is the title of the album itself. It’s been a pet peeve of mine that bands lately have resorted to dropping vowels out of names. I’m not sure if they are just being lazy or trying to sound cool, but it’s lame. A vowel is needed to say a word, if there isn’t a vowel then it’s an acronym. Let’s all band together and pressure the kids to stop this trend because it’s starting to get annoying.

Now that the Blade Runner future is upon us we can perhaps look forward to the dystopian future of Clockwork Orange where all music is synth derivatives of Beethoven.

Written by the replicant – Mchl Ungr