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LP
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BEWITH 163LP
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Steve Moore returns to the library music fold and it's a total doozy: Cursed Objects is truly sensational prog-synth-wave, featuring epic electronic explorations with chamber music and symphonic flourishes. In keeping with the horror heat of the music contained within, this vinyl release is frighteningly limited, with just 500 pressed for the world. New York-based multi-instrumentalist/producer/film composer Steve Moore is probably best known for his synthesizer and bass guitar work as Zombi, together with Anthony Paterra. But he is also part of Miracle and Titan as well as being a prolific solo artist releasing music as Gianni Rossi, Lovelock, and under his own name. Steve released Cursed Objects for fresh library label Fold, which is run by ex-KPM head Paul Sandell. The LP opens by letting in "The Uninvited One." Calm and relaxed arpeggiated synths build around sweeping strings and plucked harp to create a mystical and hopeful feel. The title track sees dark synths merge and swell with a piano, string and harp melody that is dark, mysterious and brooding. "Evolutionary Steps" is an electro-synthwave track that builds with epic strings and beats, offering an expansive and dreamy approach with a mystical and driving rhythm. Next up, "The Icarus Feather" is daring, pulsing and cinematic synthwave that builds with arpeggiated synths to a hopeful end. "Daily Affirmations" offers calm and meditative ambient synths with plucked harp and strings for a reflective, peaceful, daydreamy feel. "Mesmer's Bauble" ushers in side two, its dark synth backing builds with plucked harp and strings building with a sense of unknown and dread; it's introspective and heartfelt. "Quiet Springs" is all mystical synths, harps and strings, building to an epic panoramic scope with a hopeful and poignant atmosphere. "Festival Of Samhain" presents a dark and brooding piano melody which builds with synths and strings to create a slow and desolate feel. "The Icarus Feather (Revisited)" is epic building synthwave with arpeggiated synths and strings and a driving rhythm. To close, "Shard Of Medusa" rides a serious and dark piano melody and, in concert with harp and strings, it creates a suspenseful and solemn atmosphere. For synths, Steve mostly used his trusty Prophet 6, as well as his Moog Minitaur and lots of Korg Polysix too. The album's cover was designed by Chris Stevenson. Mastering for this vinyl edition was overseen by Be With regular Simon Francis, and it was cut by the esteemed Cicely Balston at AIR Studios to be pressed in the Netherlands by Record Industry.
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LP
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BEWITH 097LP
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When a synth master like Steve Moore joins forces with the legendary KPM, magic must materialize. And so it does with Analog Sensitivity: cinematic, enigmatic synth scapes to both haunt and heal. New York-based multi-instrumentalist/producer/film composer Steve Moore is probably best known for his synthesizer and bass guitar work as Zombi, together with Anthony Paterra. But he is also part of Miracle and Titan as well as being a prolific solo artist releasing music as Gianni Rossi, Lovelock, and under his own name. Rather than being commissioned by KPM, Analog Sensitivity comes from music Steve was recording sporadically and tinkering with for over three years during the downtime between his film projects. After Jon Tye invited him to play on the Ocean Moon project for KPM, Steve realized that the hallowed library label might be the perfect home for what he had been working on. Finishing production in late 2019 in Albany, NY, he came up with the track sequencing and suddenly, he had an album: Analog Sensitivity. The LP opens with the dystopian electronic minimalism of "Eldborg", its dark synth bass unfolding to ominous synth pads, shadowy sustains, and glistening arpeggios. "At The Edge Of Perception" brings an unsettling retro-future of edgy analog leads and desolate FX. The sound of a robotic core tears through the sparse textures of the enigmatic "Rose Of Charon". A chilling breeze blows through a persistent, hypnotic synth sequence on "Time Freeze". Title track "Analog Sensitivity" is a sparkling transcendental synth scape of melody, drones, and celestial synth. The brooding "Behind The Waterfall" winds down the first side, building subtle strings and a desolate sound beneath its haunting organ. "Mirror Mountain" ushers in side two, its woozy bass and arpeggio unfolding to envelop the muffled, muted echoes of its organic leads. "Syzygy" emerges you in bubbling sequences, airiness, and ambient electric guitar tones. It's followed by the cinematic minimalism of "Pentagram Of Venus" and its trickling FX. The wind swirls through the otherworldly "Of Dust Thou Art" kicking up clouds of unsettling, plodding synth sequences leading to the uneasy atmosphere of "Message From The Beast". Closing track "Urge Surfing" is as cool a climax as you'd hope from something so brilliantly titled, riding along hushed waves of brooding electronics. Mastering by Simon Francis, cut by Pete Norman, pressed in the Netherlands by Record Industry.
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12"
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KOM 415EP
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Kompakt announce the return of New York's synth wizard Steve Moore to the label -- pretty much exactly ten years after his much lauded first appearance Bayern Kurve on the Speicher series. Steve Moore is widely recognized as one half of Italo disco-tinged horror-prog project Zombi, his numerous thriller movie soundtrack works (The Guest, VFW, Mayhem, Bliss, The Mind's Eye) as well has his clubbier output on Ron Morelli's L.I.E.S. imprint. The title track of this four-track EP, Frame Dragging sees Moore in full spine-tingling mode. In case you've ever stepped into a hot bath on a cold day (in case you haven't you should try it) you should be well familiar with the phenomenon of being incredibly cold and hot at once. That's exactly what "Frame Digging" does to the dancefloor. Goosebump massacre. "Gamma Quadrant" combines emotive Balearic elements with a rolling minimal house track that's reminiscent of early Playhouse glory. Or is it early Kompakt? "Gravity Well" and "Protostar" are both taking a more chilled out route. They perfectly bookend both sides of the record and showcase Moore's stunning ability of creating suspenseful, spaced-out beauty.
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2LP
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SP 032LP
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Double LP version. Pangaea Ultima, Steve Moore's debut record on Spectrum Spools, is an epic musical achievement, not simply for its sonic sophistication and compositional mastery, but also because Moore has crafted here an album that has come as close to any in transcending the boxed human logic of time and place. The album title refers to the name which geologists have given to the future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years. Over the course of the nine pieces on Pangaea Ultima, Moore meditates upon the realization of this new land mass in an uncharted part of the world's moment. How will this continent come to be formed? What forces and what processes create it? What is this continent's terrain of "Endless Mountains" and "Endless Caverns," and on what kind of planet will it be? These are all speculative questions that alight the listener as they are subsumed into Steve Moore's synthscapes which unfurl with equal amounts of delicacy and meticulous detail. In some respects, the attitude and ambition of Pangaea Ultima places this work in a similar canon as the mythic territory of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra or the cosmic imaginations of Michael Stearns' Planetary Unfolding, and yet it evades both comparisons as easily. There is something mysteriously self-contained, urgent that pervades these assemblages of tracks. "Logotone" exhibits Moore's ability to stretch the sensibilities of melodic and chordal phrasing to limits that Schulze or Alan Hawkshaw wouldn't have gone. The compositions on Pangaea Ultima, like "Planetwalk" and "Nemesis" are more tightly coiled even in their constant straining to explode outwards to the stars beyond. And when Moore plays with rhythms, they resemble the idiosyncratic mould of his releases for Long Island Electrical Systems, Future Times and Kompakt, and yet seem to push even further towards an eerie sparseness yet to be fully tapped. If there are 4/4 kicks on Pangaea Ultima, like on "Deep Time" and the title-track, it's for a world skewed on a bent axis. Musically, this is a record of both microscopic and macroscopic reward, an absorbing listen that betrays the album's 60 minutes of length. Which again returns us to the question of time and how so expertly Moore has managed to avoid it. Or more so, how he has managed to find a fold in time -- an atemporal space -- here this album anomalously nestles by itself. Moore reaches out to the moment of genesis of Pangaea Ultima and slips into its imaginary logic of time and place. He does not intrude or indulge there. Nor are there any "retro" homages or "sci-fi" tropes/ambitions on Pangaea -- we cannot even be sure whether humans have a history they can call a future on this continent. Yet just as easily, as geologists concede, this future super-continent may never end up eventuating, which would mean this imminently possible reality will melt into fantasy. But this too, is not a bad place for Steve Moore's masterpiece to end up, either. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker, August 2013. Artwork and design by Robert Beatty.
myth is the internalising of
natural phenomena through
explicable narratives
fantasy is the stepping outside
of history in order to make
narratives explicable
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CD
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SP 032CD
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Pangaea Ultima, Steve Moore's debut record on Spectrum Spools, is an epic musical achievement, not simply for its sonic sophistication and compositional mastery, but also because Moore has crafted here an album that has come as close to any in transcending the boxed human logic of time and place. The album title refers to the name which geologists have given to the future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years. Over the course of the nine pieces on Pangaea Ultima, Moore meditates upon the realization of this new land mass in an uncharted part of the world's moment. How will this continent come to be formed? What forces and what processes create it? What is this continent's terrain of "Endless Mountains" and "Endless Caverns," and on what kind of planet will it be? These are all speculative questions that alight the listener as they are subsumed into Steve Moore's synthscapes which unfurl with equal amounts of delicacy and meticulous detail. In some respects, the attitude and ambition of Pangaea Ultima places this work in a similar canon as the mythic territory of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra or the cosmic imaginations of Michael Stearns' Planetary Unfolding, and yet it evades both comparisons as easily. There is something mysteriously self-contained, urgent that pervades these assemblages of tracks. "Logotone" exhibits Moore's ability to stretch the sensibilities of melodic and chordal phrasing to limits that Schulze or Alan Hawkshaw wouldn't have gone. The compositions on Pangaea Ultima, like "Planetwalk" and "Nemesis" are more tightly coiled even in their constant straining to explode outwards to the stars beyond. And when Moore plays with rhythms, they resemble the idiosyncratic mould of his releases for Long Island Electrical Systems, Future Times and Kompakt, and yet seem to push even further towards an eerie sparseness yet to be fully tapped. If there are 4/4 kicks on Pangaea Ultima, like on "Deep Time" and the title-track, it's for a world skewed on a bent axis. Musically, this is a record of both microscopic and macroscopic reward, an absorbing listen that betrays the album's 60 minutes of length. Which again returns us to the question of time and how so expertly Moore has managed to avoid it. Or more so, how he has managed to find a fold in time -- an atemporal space -- here this album anomalously nestles by itself. Moore reaches out to the moment of genesis of Pangaea Ultima and slips into its imaginary logic of time and place. He does not intrude or indulge there. Nor are there any "retro" homages or "sci-fi" tropes/ambitions on Pangaea -- we cannot even be sure whether humans have a history they can call a future on this continent. Yet just as easily, as geologists concede, this future super-continent may never end up eventuating, which would mean this imminently possible reality will melt into fantasy. But this too, is not a bad place for Steve Moore's masterpiece to end up, either. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker, August 2013. Artwork and design by Robert Beatty.
myth is the internalising of
natural phenomena through
explicable narratives
fantasy is the stepping outside
of history in order to make
narratives explicable
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