The retro-future cinematic feel is complemented with a very creative mixture of spoken words, oscillators, dirty ambient textures, computer-controlled bleeps, drones and powerful lead synths.
A long play soundtrack for an imaginary sci-fi flick
South African producer clocolan is back with a stellar release called Empathy Alpha. This 5-track vinyl album seems to gather many of his references to futuristic sound into a long play soundtrack for an imaginary sci-fi flick, like a fermenting work in progress, still being edited, frame by frame, in a Kubrick’esque director’s mind. Although his synth weapons of choice sound very contemporary, the general mood created, specially by content of the carefully selected movie lines, possibly themed after memory loss and the history of mankind on the verge of being wiped out, seem to throw you back in retro mode, since the imagery created in the listener’s mind relate vividly to THX-1138, The Black Hole and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Even though a very dark and mysterious mood sews the tracks all together in a complete patchwork reel, each music piece is very rich in terms of the many internal scene parts they seem to contain. The title track sets the album’s tone with its aseptic dialog introducing a dystopian world, not so far in the future as predicted on the movies the artist references. It is a memory-manipulated and physically controlled society on the verge of collapse. An arpeggiator completes the hopelessness as it does again with more intensity at the end of the second track.
As the line “There is no escape, for any of us” initiates “Informity,” clocolan creates a perfect bed of dissonant pads to match the sinister memories of an old man telling how worlds warped out by the actions of evil men. As the album continues, the retro-future cinematic feel is complemented with a very creative mixture of spoken words, oscillators, dirty ambient textures, computer-controlled bleeps, drones and powerful lead synths. A great catch for all the science loving nerds out there, myself included.
Empathy Alpha is available on Redpan. [Bandcamp]
