Losing My Mind may be a paranoid ode to our current reality but with its Jamie Lidell-style manic space-house it’s the kind of conspiracy theory you can twirl to at 2am.
One of Us is Luis Dubuc’s response to a world where private information is easily obtained, where mundanities are recorded and analysed and there is no true “freedom”.Ī concept album about a couple fighting back against dystopian oppression doesn’t sound like a dance-floor filler, but thankfully One of Us retains the open-hearted silliness of Dubuc’s previous offerings. The production of the album is by far the best thing Mystery Skulls has done in his career, but his vocals only work with a handful of the tracks on “Back to Life.” They don’t ruin the album for me, but they make me want to see what this album could have been if Mystery Skulls had worked on it for a couple of more weeks.It’s been three years since the hedonistic, youthful fun times of Mystery Skulls’ debut, Forever, and the party is well and truly over, lyrically at least. Listen to his discography in order of release. Before signing with Warner Music, Dubuc released several promotional videos for Mystery Skulls, pairing his songs with retro footage of Star Wars, He-Man. If you are a new listener, I wouldn’t recommend this as the first album to listen to if you want to get into Mystery Skulls. Overall, “Back to Life” is definitely worth a listen. If more time was put into the vocal side of the album, this could have been Mystery Skulls’ best album. I enjoy that part the most, but his singing just doesn’t pair up with it to the point where I don’t like it as much as other songs on the album. However, there are songs on this album I like enough to bypass the spotty vocals, like the song “In My Dreams.” The sound is there. I appreciated his raspy voice, and it brings a different element to his songs that I don’t see from other electronic acts like him. Dubuc’s vocals throughout his discography have never been a problem for me. Photo courtesy of Ī good majority of this album’s vocals come from Mystery Skulls, or Luis Dubuc. Luis Dubuc, aka Mystery Skulls, released his third album this past Friday. But god does this smells like good ol Mystery Skulls right here. The album does falter big time in one aspect: the vocals. One of us and Back to life were great album but way too far from my comfort zone. As the song and album name suggests, the song comes to life with a bouncy bass and a playful piano that is featured on the chorus. The title track, and last of the three singles, is the best song overall on the album.
Putting any of these singles on either one of his first two albums only would have made them better. With each release, the singles only made me more and more excited for the album’s release. The album’s singles really show how well this works. Combining “Forever’s” groovy bass-lines with “One of Us'” club approach, it just works so well. Mystery Skulls combined what worked in his first two albums and blended them beautifully to create what is his greatest produced collection of songs. With the exception of the album’s opening track, which is essentially just noise that opens the album for a good two minutes, the production of every song is great. Even when I listened to the album on my car rides to work or wherever I was going at the time, regardless of what mood I was in, I just wanted to shimmy my shoulders to the beat of each song. From beginning to end, “Back to Life” brought me to doing some fancy footwork when I was listening to the album by myself. Mystery Skulls’ third studio album, “Back to Life,” does just that. Whether it is through the samples the producer uses or however many beats per minute a song plays at, the production of an electronic album is the most important part to what makes it listenable, and more importantly, enjoyable. Electronica fills you with a sensation to dance, move around and bring you to a happier state of mind when you plug your headphones in and give it a listen.