Synthdance.com

Information from the album booklet:

"This is a Finnish crafted masterpiece of a very unknown genre called Spacesynth. The album was surely made with great heart and love. The sounds first of all remind us of older 16 bit game’s like those from nintendo brought into more detail. The way the song’s change parts and go from a pattern into the next and back is lovely cause there’s really no endless repetition of the same sounds as with some electronic music genres and artists.

It’s an adventure, you might be in outer space, some far away galaxy the hero of the story and your determined to change the world, bring peace and harmony into the realm & on a journey meeting many strangers & interesting beings. This album is an invitation into imagination, it's very emotionally packed. There’s also vocoder parts to underline that the album is about loss, loneliness, departing & finding your own way in life. On the journey we might discover some hostile territory too, but with the right weaponry and gear we can surely triumph any space hostility we find.

Then we start to jump into more of the origins of the Spacesynth genre, namely that’s Italo Disco where this genre originated from. In the album there’s also some historical references and themes into the space exploration that Americans did, it’s a thought experiment into how most of our knowledge about outer space is relied on outer resources not of our own experiences.

I remember listening to this album at the computer festival assembly here in Finland. Like in outer space and flashing lights all around us, the album comes into a drifting in space, like being an astronaut on a mission just waiting, then we are taken into an action, maybe an old arcade with those plastic pistols you fired at the screen. Fast paced action ensues, you can hear that popular culture has effected this Spacesynth artist heavily, references like bionic commando come into mind in the more actionable parts of the record. The songs become bit more repetitive near the middle of part of the album and to be quite honest i’m starting to lose interest in listening it, but i decide to not abort this mission, but instead to keep on searching the right words to describe what i hear.

You might realize certain patterns being used here and timings that repeat in some of the songs, just with different sounds. One of the songs is also faded out on my opinions at kind of a wrong timing.

The rhythms here are not maybe variable enough and it feels that some of the albums songs later in the whole of it were a called finished at quite an experimental stage. If we are now trying to rank Spacesynth artists in top 10 order I would say that ELECTRON is positioned to be at least in the 10 best one of them, it’s a very unknown and underground genre of music that in my own opinion should be revived with some current day computer hardware and software options available. Tides of Darkness album is from the year 2006 & considering that it has stood the test of time very well.

It brings to my mind a lifestyle of back in those days of cheap soda and microwave pizza, adsl modems and the whole fare that was related to the growing of Finnish economy in these times. From the imagination we come back into the reality and the questions of how this album was actually born? If you don’t understand Finnish culture and how it was back in those times you probably cannot place the finger on where the magical feeling in this album comes from.

I start to feel on later parts of the album that the creator of the sounds has left the wheel or the holodeck and the music is playing on it’s own. That it’s no longer created by humans indeed, but this surely was not the time of A.I generated MUSIC.

There’s also an element of art for art sake over here. Depicting manufacturing and the quality of the actual electronics, pcb’s and the parts of computers with the sounds that they themselves create. Adding a conceptual layer to this record that makes you think of old western movies where the piano’s are playing themselves. As the album progresses the human element is removed more and more until we find ourselves in more tropical soundscapes. In Finland there are 4 seasons and you can again sense how the artist himself has come back and experiences the real world out there. There’s a feeling of victory and a kind of a loop to the beginning of the album.

The rhythms of the album might not be very well suited for, running, jogging, or cycling. I would say that this album sounds like it’s made by someone who wasn’t very physically active, that’s just my guess. Some songs become pretty disco though so there’s some dance worthiness here, but this music genre is not for the party types. No. The hero is back and & day has been saved. Now go and listen to it with more thought one more time. Stay tuned for more review like this in the future here at my YouTube channel & maybe in the future time a blog reserved just for these album reviews".