Technology dances with the nervous system on the new album by Warm Ghosts. Insular, claustrophobic, and human, this record is all about using sound to create an environment where the natural world is on equal footing with the synthetic. Paul Duncan, the man behind the music, is haunted by childhood images, dreams, and the possibilities of tomorrow.

Every track is constructed out of bite size memory sounds, overtly familiar electronics that are a tad too retro. One can almost here a DJ announce, “welcome to 80s night,” but there are also the glitchy electrodes of the early 00′s present on the album as well. “Once One” features both modern beats and the smooth croon of a Duran Duran ballad. While “Myths of Rotting Ships” is the most interesting and successful cut on this record because it is more unique than the surrounding songs. Spooky in a cerebral way, “Myths” lives up to Duncan‘s boast about making music that is “challenging to the ear.”

Several tracks are so amorphous that any attention paid them tends to waiver or disappear over the time span of listening. Even when the music features exciting production choices, the listener may zone out before the meat of the matter. “Mariana” has some of the finest music on Narrows, but it appears at the very end of the track, after one has become tired of wading through bland synth jabs. “An Absolute Light” is the best produced piece here and also one of the most tedious. Crunchy rhythmic beginnings bleed into brass ambient farewells, beautiful yes, but boring.

Narrows is an intimate project with deeply personal tones, perhaps too personal. The inward focus of this record allows very little light in. Imagine painting every window in a house black and never seeing the sun or never fully waking up from dreams too abstract to be called nightmares, then that is the sound of this record.