Album Review by Triplicate Records:
Jonny Fallout returns with yet another stellar selection of spacey-bangers entitled: 'Travelogue'. Let's not waste time here. You know him, you love him, you're well aware we feel the same given how much we release his wonderful music! Let's examine!
'Music Can Do All These Things' It can make you feel things in your body that words can't! Not my words, Johnny's! Or rather whomever is being sampled Orb-style on this opening masterpiece. I'll sign off on the sentiment though! Particular with regards to this airy, infectious opening number! A lovely way to kick things off and get back into the fallout groove. The groovy cosmic kind, not the mushroom cloud one.
'Hello Goodbye' takes the vocal sample-heavy vibe of the opener and runs with it. Vocoders the everloving heck out of it too! Suddenly you're transported to a 90's medium intensity-to-chill style rave. The classic dance sensibilities on here recall the work of many a house and electronica household name from this period, whilst maintaining a freshness that propels the listener onward. Onward into equally mid-intensity infectious techno piece 'Oxygen Mask', wherein an under-the-surface bubbling of unease, aided by the subject matter is lost to the dizzying sway of that dance beat. This is when it starts to become truly apparent that Jonny has crafted an album of wall to wall bangers.
'Travelogue' starts with what you need after a solid 7 or 8 minutes of dancing: a much deserved breather. Into the chill-out room we go as the BPM drops, the synths get all airy and slick, and the vibe goes icy and transcendent. For a time, that is. We're soon happily pulled back into the crunchy breakbeat fray with a dance-standard percussion line and scattered, colourful arpeggios. Over the course of this lengthy dosage of sweetness, the style remains consistent. Impressively so, given the length. Focus is never lost in the quieter moments or the more exploratory excursions in the second half. It's a banger through and through, and a clear highlight.
Things again take a chill-pill on 'From East To West'. New York to LA? Japan to London? Pluto to the Sun? What do you mean the cosmos doesn't work like that? Anyway, this one's good. If you listened to the last four tunes you could probably already predict that. It's low-key and with a delightfully crunchy lo-fi beat, coupled with shiny utopian synth keys. 'Isn't Love Important' on the other hand.. alright, here we go. This is my personal favourite. It's not as though nothing else compares. On a mix of tracks as solid as 'Travelogue', competition is fierce, but somehow the dreamy synths & airy, warped pads, underpinned by the scattered and kaleidoscopic arpeggios coalesce beautifully into a track that truly does not have a single wasted or imperfect second. It's everything you love from this producer, turned up to 11. This one is for the cream of the crop playlist.
Rolling away into the third act, We have our one & only true through & through chill-out number, 'Faraway Dreams of Other Worlds'. Finally Jonny chooses a tune to stay mellow and calm, it's your second breather, and the one you really need. Lunch break at school as opposed to the little one after the second period. It's also a banger to boot, as are the mind-bending space whirls of the following number, 'Stargazer': Colourful & hypnotic in the vein of the second half of 'Travelogue', but with a decidedly less intense vibe, though no less enjoyable to listen to. So you can tell things are winding down, but Johnny's still having fun doing it. It's later into the night and people still want to dance, their bodies are just crying out for a pizza or something.
And so, we are segway'd into the closer. The long journey home. Or maybe it just feels long because you're stopping to smell the musical flowers. Or if we're piggybacking on Johnny's space-sensibilities, to gaze at the nebulas. Thin metaphors aside, what a fantastic closer to a fantastic album. All the tricks in JF's arsenal come to the forefront on this immaculate and cosmic closer. The funky stringy synthwork, the hypnosis-inducing classic dance percussion, & the four-dimensional instrumentation and mixing.
Johnny's done it again. You knew he had it in him, and it's abundantly clear this burning comet of creativity isn't burning out anytime soon.
