Winking Makes a Face – Tadd Mullinix

From Michigan-based upstart Ghostly International, Tadd Mullinix churns out a set of dark, urbanized electronica that stood up to and succeeded many other recordings from that prolific genre in 2000. Mullinix takes a blend of the synthetic and devastating beats of Front 242 and some contemporary, glitchy electro sensibilities, and ties them together with a melodic progression unheard since Atari debuted the soundtrack to Tron. Really, it's the bombastic sonic textures mixed with those melodic lines (which are almost classical in their complexity) that save Winking Makes a Face from being lost in the electronica swamp of half-hearted laptop doodling, and instead projects as a realized set of tracks that paint cool-handed landscapes stuck without a real sense of space and time. Majestic and lush, Winking finds a nice place within the growing and highly respectable Ghostly catalog. ~ Jack LV Isles, All Music Guide