Music For The Long Emergency

This imaginative collaboration reveals itself as a ghostly and brooding collection with a healthy dappling of rainbow-bright harmonies. [Apr 2018, p.89]

Icily brilliant. [Mar 2018, p.32]

The collaboration works wonders for both artists, as the textural beauty of Poliça is expanded with the added depth that s t a r g a z e bring.

As protest music goes, it is not particularly uplifting. Yet despair is kept at bay by the sheer majesty of the lush, dense, beautifully sculpted, wonderfully alien sound.

A true coming together. [Mar 2018, p.113]

[Cursed is] a rare misstep in an assured record that brings out the best of both collaborators.

Though dark times have inspired and shaped this work, there is light and hope in its message of communication, achieving a real sense of togetherness.

Poliça have broken new ground and consolidated old strengths with this laudable step outside of their comfort zone.

This is Music For the Long Emergency, an emergency that will not be going away any time soon and should be fought with, and wrestled with, over sombre synths and disturbing undulations. When a musical response to a politically lost society feels so appropriate, it is a wonder how anyone is listening to album after album of perfect cadences at all.

Recorded with Berlin-based chamber orchestra s t a r g a z e, their sound is simultaneously laid bare and enriched by its cinematic qualities.

Even if it's not always as coherent as Poliça and s t a r g a z e's own albums, Music for the Long Emergency's experiments balance ambition and emotion in admirable ways.

Whatever looming shadow might darken your homeland, Music for the Long Emergency offers a substantive retreat, with enough room for minds to rest and wander in peace.

Though it definitely has its moments and manages to grapple with the horror of modernity there’s a split keeping this from feeling quite as cohesive as it should.

While there are some interesting elements to Music For the Long Emergency, and there are aspects of both POLIÇA and s t a r g a z e's music that work well together, the album is generally quite confused and lacking in any real excitement.

For all the anxious rhetoric of its literary namesake, Emergency flourishes when it avoids aggression.