SURGE - Wreckage

Surge are not exactly what can be called new comers. The band first got together back in 1992, in London. Originally an instrumental dance combo, Surge released an album in the mid-nineties, but only took form as they appear now, in 1997, when they eventually signed a record deal with Millennium Records. Wreckage is their first album as an electronic vocal band.
The first single to be released, featuring ex-lead singer Sally Strawberry, was a somewhat daring cover of the Gershwin classic Summertime. Starting as a rather subdued ambient affair, reminiscent of tracks from The Orb, period Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, the song suddenly turns into a paranoid trip-hop monster, featuring heavy guitars, deconstructed strings and horns, and choir. The voice, almost ethereal, seems to float amid this unexpected chaos. Summertime sums up the contradictions the listener is faced while listening to Surge, as the band blow hot and cold all along. Wreckage, the opening track, sung by new full-time vocalist Becky Kaye, is somewhat more straightforward than Summertime. However, it plays on more or less the same strings. That is, slightly disturbing ambience, immense pop ratio, and, in this case, contrast between voice, at the forefront of the spectrum, and arrangements. Sometimes suggestive of The Creatures (Cold Air, Upon My, Smokey Sunday), Depeche Mode circa 1997 (Falling Moment) or Portishead, Surge’s range of action is astonishingly wide. The haunting Falling Down, Be With You or She Brings The Rain are equally as magnificent and intense as the more dramatic Falling Moment or Cold Air. Closing the album is Here & There, an instrumental, complete with voice sample, that is not without reminding some of In The Nursery's work from the early nineties.
Wreckage is to some extent, a strangely disturbing record, stuck between elaborated pop and decadent electro. Surge’s Frankenstein machines are in turn chilling, mind-blowing, or simply charming. This is an album you won’t forget.