Review
Six albums in, and Daniel Avery has stopped hedging. Where earlier records balanced floor-facing momentum against introspective detours, Tremor — and by extension this expanded Deluxe Edition — commits to the dark and stays there. Clash's Lee Wakefield noted that "flickering moments of sunlight" exist throughout, but that "Avery and his collaborators are quick to grab us and plunge us back into the blackness." That gravitational pull is the record's defining quality. AllMusic identified "a singular form of distortion-doused electronic rock which dwells in a nocturnal landscape," and the production choices bear that out: Alan Moulder's fingerprints are audible in the way distortion is applied as texture rather than aggression, and the collaborators — Alison Mosshart, bdrmm, Julie Dawson, yuné pinku — read less as features than as pressure systems passing through the same charged atmosphere.
The Deluxe Edition adds reworks and new material without disturbing the original's center of gravity. DIY called Tremor simultaneously "his most accessible and most idiosyncratic record to date," and the bonus tracks sustain that tension — club-ready edits and deeper ambient stretches that confirm the album's range was always wider than a single listen suggested.
