Patricia Hall and Ian Hicks have found the perfect balance between the moody and the danceable, making the whole home clubbing experience all the more realistic.
The way that Soft Metals experiment with repetition without needing much time to do so is unusual and impressive, with Lenses ending up so much stronger for allowing the ideas behind the music to drift into view of the audience.
Lenses is a masterly album and Soft Metals’ brand of inventive, ghostly electro is a welcome break from the flood of brainless EDM that’s cluttering up airwaves and dancefloors everywhere at the moment.
Even if Lenses' individual tracks remain as foggy as dry ice on the dancefloor, as a whole the album brings Soft Metals' music into focus, revealing them as a tighter, more versatile group in the process.
There’s no doubt that Soft Metals know their genre well, and through all the creepiness, there’s a kind of joy in hearing two young musicians in their element.
Lenses comes off like a proggy, synth pop album that wants to get treated like sound sculpture, but Soft Metals don't fully commit to either endeavor in spite of the record's handful of successes.
Like an anecdote desperately mis-remembered or discovering, multiple hours in, that night's alcohol is having no effect, 'Lenses', despite its four-to-the-floor tendencies and impeccable imagery, falls flat.
While this could have been a record defined by atmosphere, the near-absence of energy and long, formless instrumental sections will have listeners tuning out long before it hits any sort of stride.