Me Extinct

Spent

Around the turn of the last century, Jorge Goyco and his wife, Leigh, proffered sunny ambient techno together as Antidote. Whether anything else about him has gotten darker in the decade-plus since the last album came from any band named Antidote, his sonic palette has deepened to shadowier hues, represented in a new moniker for his solo act, Me, Extinct. (The deepening seems to mirror the name change, from an affirmative reference (Acts 4:12) to one of self-negation (John 3:30).

Sonically, that equates to Nettwerk and Wax Trax! back catalogs deep on Goyco’s hard drive, churning with compressed, distorted, industrial guitar crunch paired with doomsday post-disco beats. Coed vocals (any sign of Leigh?), some rapped, others almost inadvertently comical in their (un)intentional wimpiness. Been done before, maybe, but possibly not without the occasional bro-step whooshes and particular combination of recombinants Goyco now calls Me, Extinct.

Been done better? Regular attendees of goth dance clubs could tell you better than I could, but this hits all the right notes of self-immolating melancholy amid wisps of redemption. (That said, Lord knows an entire evening of a similar style-direness could get most anyone dancing during my grad school days.)

The intervals of more organic-sounding beat work gels better than the rhyme-spit lyrics when it comes to Me, Extinct.’s hip-hop elements, but Consolidated and M .C. 900’s work seemed like borderline novelties to my ears, as well.

In short, save for the possibility of an additional fan here or there of Georgia O’Keefe-style artwork and wants a physical copy, Spent will resonate with those already enamored with Goyco’s subsect of the darkly danceable; others may admire, if not wholly embrace.