Album Review: Apollo Vermouth- Fractured Youth

I’ve said it quite a number of times before when writing up an ambient/experimental/drone release—that if it’s done well, an instrumental album can be and incredibly cathartic and transcendental listening experience. And the Wisconsin-based artist Alisa Rodriguez has done just that with her latest effort, Fractured Youth, released under the moniker Apollo Vermouth.

Fractured Youth is one of the seven new releases that Kevin Greenspon’s Bridgetown Records has #blessed onto the world in his Spring Batch of cassettes, and it’s also the moodiest of those releases, and by the time it concludes, it’s the most desolate, leaving the listener emotionally drained.

Throughout the course of the six tracks, Rodriguez crafts pieces that show incredible restraint and patience, and at times (specifically in the second half of the album) allows them to grow to become unhinged. It’s very apparent that each one is very deliberate and calculated in structure.

There’s some real devastation on Fractured Youth—both woven into the layers of guitar feedback and drone, as well as surrounding the entire project itself. The album is dedicate to the memory of a deceased friend, and in other press materials related to the release of this effort, much has been made of that, as well as the fact that this is the kind of music to purge demons to.

Fractured Youth’s best, and most emotional track is also its closing—“Drift” begins slowly with warm sounding guitar drones swirling around you, but before you know it, you’re drowning in an ocean of emotional anguish as harsh waves of noise encircle you.

Arriving at a running time of a half hour, Fractured Youth is the kind of record that could actually go on for much longer than that, and I would be perfectly fine with that. Within the emotional turmoil fueling these songs, Rodriguez also (whether she knows it or not) has created a record that is rather comforting and reassuring.

Fractured Youth is out now as a digital download or as a limited edition cassette, via Bridgetown.