Accumulative Effect

Z-Arc

Boltfish Recordings

Web: http://www.boltfish.co.uk

Z-Arc's first solo release on Boltfish Recordings is an energetic and futuristic album with rare dreamy interludes, the synthesizers bubbling, punching and flying through a landscape of fractured percussion and crunchy beats. It has a refreshing sound and while at times drifting into what could be defined as retro sound, it offers a unique revisioning of the genre. You may hear what seems like “memories” of Kraftwerk or even early Tangerine Dream or Ashra, but these are only fleeting and it is though he has filtered all his influences into a new form. Tracks like Airlocked certainly break any retro feel offering a dark and confronting electronica which is as modern as any contemporary sound.

Accumulative Effect is primarily by Asimov novels and popular science books concerned with universal atomic expansion – in my mind it is nice to see such themes mixed together into such a creative electronic form. The range of soundscapes in this work is impressive, covering from retro electronica to very modern dark ambient, even perhaps industrial, to some more synthpop type numbers with melodic and ethereal elements.

I highly recommend this CD and heard more in it every time I played it ! It is a science fiction soundtrack for the modern world, bringing with it all the hopes, horrors, dreams and terrors which the future can include.