Core Ten - Has It Ever Crossed Your Mind?

​Core Ten

Has It Ever Crossed Your Mind?
self-released; 2024

​By ​Dino DiMuro

The band Electric Angels is already well-known to the Pitch Perfect site, and Eric Daum is one half of that group. His solo project is called Core Ten, and his fifth full-length album is called Has It Ever Crossed Your Mind?

The songs and music of Core Ten explore Daum’s fascination with late ‘70s and early ’80s synth-pop, ambient, and krautrock. This album delves into themes of "unrequited love, obsessive longing, missed opportunities, and a universe that got its timing wrong. The songs themselves were inspired by an unwitting muse who can and will never know that she inspired this collection." I recently reviewed an album with a similar theme, and I can always get behind a full album’s worth of songs wrestling with a messy, shattered relationship!

Musically, Daum describes his structures as "weaving drone and repetition, bubbling sequencers, bouncy synth-pop leads, the romanticism of massed strings and my own unfortunate croon." Speaking of crooning, Daum goes on to note that his vocals are often whispered or intentionally left out of sync with each other "… to suggest the inner conflict of these emotions." The full album has been gestating for more than a year, with many songs rewritten or rejected. Daum calls the recording process "a relatively low-tech affair," having been tracked in his dining room on GarageBand and using Logic for mastering.

"Behind Your Garden Wall" immediately put me in mind of Bowie’s electro-pop period, with a similar voice, beat, and arrangement. Daum overdubs some nice harmony vocals on the chorus, which is followed by a natty lead synth melody. It’s a simple but confident dream pop construction with definite spacey vibes. "Kloster av Laderarbetaren" features metallic, ethereal chords rushing in and out like an otherworldly squeezebox. The main melody has a sci-fi movie Theremin texture, interspersed with deliberate, quietly dramatic piano chords. By the end of this brief two minutes, one is amazed at how beautifully these disparate elements came together.

"Calliope" has a thumpy, aggressive e-drum beat as Daum speak-sings across the top. The subject matter suddenly becomes quite personal, in much the same way Neil Young sang about his special-needs son in "Trans." Musically, I have to point out the debt to The Human League, obvious though that may be! "The Archetype" opens with a short story told in sound, very much like the opening of "The Dark Side Of The Moon" or ELO’s "Eldorado." The beats here are a bit unwieldy, though brought together by the confidence of Daum’s vocals and the many infusions of acoustic piano alongside the synths.

Going way back in time, the opening of "Her Backward Glance" had an effect on me very much like the Moody Blues classic "Knights In White Satin." The chord scheme and orchestrations are similar, and though a short two minutes, I found this composition especially relaxing. "December" is a cover of an Electric Angels song that I actually reviewed way back in 2023. On that album, I was amazed how the boys piled up so many tracks yet still produced recognizable songs, and this one in particular reminded me of the Velvet Underground. Not surprisingly, this version ditches the overdriven guitars in favor or percolating synths, though Daum’s vocals are quite similar and just as good.

The insistent, somewhat military-like marching beat of "The Time Of Our Lives" contrasts interestingly with Daum’s sensitive, introspective lyrics. Hard to trust my ears, but I feel I’m hearing some electric guitars in this track, unless the synths have been programmed to sound that way. Daum excels at the slow, steady build, and this is another example of a song that gradually pulls you into its slipstream.

Thematically, "Has It Ever Crossed Your Mind?" brings us closer to some sort of closure to this mysterious but broken relationship, and as such, Daum mixes his halting vocals even higher in the mix, with the synth melodies acting as caretakers. But just as the narrator’s heart seems to have opened the slightest bit, "It’s Absurd To Think" takes us literally under the microscope where things look frighteningly oversized: "It’s naive to hope, under the microscope, that we would last / I can’t believe, or that you’d perceive, our chance has passed." The music becomes steadily more funereal, letting us know for sure that the fun times have passed. And yet, darkly beautiful.

​These songs, along with some shorter instrumentals I didn’t mention, make for a compelling journey and one I’d highly recommend!

Tweet