Inner Exit- Touched

Inner Exit’s new CD starts out nicely enough, with a pretty soprano singing over violins and cellos, and just when you’re ready for a pleasant if uninspiring selection of moderately bleak classically-influenced goth, a stuttering electronic rhythm kicks in and that pleasant soprano gets really throaty and wild. Those vocal acrobatics continue throughout the album, and in fact contribute in large part to Inner Exit’s unique charm. Lead singer Vesna Marinovic has an extraordinarily wide range of vocal tricks that recall Kate Bush or Bjork. At a moment’s notice, she can leap from girlish soprano to throaty bellow, from floating ethereal to frantic yelp, and this very unpredictability makes it a far more compelling listen than the average ethereal fare. There is a trade-off, of course; unlike Dead Can Dance or Delirium, you’re never going to be able to put this on at bedtime. If Marinovic’s dramatic vocals on “Hibernation” don’t put you on edge, then Solveig Moske’s tense violin work on “Ju-Ni” or programmer Herbert Stumpf’s bombastic orchestral arrangements on “Tears” certainly will, and “Denial” throws all of these elements over the nervous steel drums of percussionist Michael Frassine. While there are relatively sedate moments that pop up on occasion – album closer “Gently Touched Your Whisper” is quietly sorrowful in the vein of This Mortal Coil – this is by and large an album too challenging to be relegated to background music. It is, however, absolutely brilliant, and comes especially recommended to fans of the edgy classical weirdness of Miranda Sex Garden or the Medieval Baebes.

Visit Inner Exit’s website at www.innerexit.de for more information.