Maikko A. of Mind.Area has established another side-project entitled Sceptica in 2016 under which he experiments with a more raw sound-design in the wide field of classic Electro-/Industrial and EBM compared to his main project. He cooperates under Sceptica from time to time with Flesh Wire, who takes responsibility for the lyrical content on a few of Maikko's tracks. Under the Sceptica moniker they have released 3 digital-only EP's available via the Russian Synth-Me net label (https://darklab.wixsite.com/synthme) and with a quite comparable concept: putting together 4 – 6 tracks and spread these EP's via Bandcamp, this Russian net label has a few remarkable releases in its holster.

„Paranormal AI“ is their newest effort and got released under their own responsibility and is destined to be the first part out of a trilogy in this year. More noisy and more Industrial-oriented compared to his main project – this is the self-explained target and actually these 4 tracks available here show us a more drastic sound outfit.

Both the instrumental tunes “Decloom” and „Samtram“ stand respectively for this with installing various percussion elements out of Dubstep and IDM genres, twisted synthesizer sounds and uncountable fx manipulations. The title track gets my vote for being the outstanding tune here, I am highly impressed with Maikko's layered lead-and-pad-programming with unheard synthesizer-sounds and his raw, distorted vocals – a really outstanding Dark Electro track.

Also the 4th and relatively straight produced track “Create” doesn't disappoint with its haunting depth and Maikko's raw vocals, although I tend to rate this one as being the most related to Maikko's main project – at least this track would fit the best also on a Mind.Area release – and that isn't a bad reference.

It looks a bit that the vocal tracks are calming down Maikko's sense to express himself in a more experimental and noisier sound-outfit, somehow the vocals are “sorting” the song structure more to a traditional composition. But that's absolutely fine with me compared to the usual top-notch quality of Dark Electro-expertise grown out of Maikko's sound laboratory. Dark Electro music has still its heydays in its illustrious community – and this one isn't to be missed.