Okay, time for my second review, this time around it's
Whereas the previous album I reviewed, "Tropical Depression" by Jake Schrock, was made entirely with synthesisers and drum machines, multi-instrumentalist Majeure brings live drums to the mix. So while both are heavy on analog synths and sequencers, the overall sound is really quite different. It's not just the addition of drums making this difference, either. Whereas Tropical Depression featured what I thought was refreshingly "to the point" composition for vintage synth music, Mass Flashback is more firmly in the drifting / meandering / constantly slowly evolving tradition. The synth material is not super heavily layered, so the resulting sound has a relatively light sound. None of this is a bad thing, at all, I can definitely appreciate this kind of music. Majeure does it well, and the drum accompaniment does a lot to stop it sliding too much into background/ambient territory, and to differentiate it from the abundance of electronic music of this style. Still, this is the only one of the three albums I bought this month which so far I haven't found some part of spontaneously popping into my head. I just don't think it's the kind of music that does that.
The overall pace of the album is quite relaxed, and the overall mood just slightly on the "dark" or melancholic side. The album description at Bandcamp says that Majeure "reviv[es] the essence of Krautrock and classic horror soundtracks". I'm not really familiar with classic horror soundtracks, but I'm thinking that might be the dominant influence here. There's definitely none of the driving "motorik" beat that I associate with Krautrock, and on the whole it sounds more soundtrackish than rockish. It never gets even remotely up in your face. It's entirely possible Majeure has other works where the balance of influences is the other way around.
Returning again to me being unduly influenced in my purchases by the non-musical aspects of albums, I was certainly pulled in to this one by a track called "Sundog blues" (which is probably my favourite on the album). As many of you will know, for the past two years I have run a Gopher-centric public access unix system called
The Mare Tranquillitatis People's Circumlunar Zaibatsu.
The name is a reference to Bruce Sterling's wonderful "Schismatrix" novel, and users at the Zaibatsu refer to one another as "sundogs", Sterling's in-universe name for a sort of live-by-wits underclass of "defectors, traitors, exiles [and] outlaws". A sundog is also
a rare meteorological phenomenon,
but I really think Majeure was referencing Schismatrix. There are two other tracks called "Presience Acquired" and "Face Dancer", and those just *have* to be Dune references, so the guy is obviously a science fiction fan. So, big points for that.
I guess overall I've sort of mentally binned this album together with Tropical Depression. Both are good albums that I enjoyed and don't regret buying, but neither have gotten me really excited and worked up and given me the feeling that I've discovered something incredible I want to seek out more of. Which, to be fair, is a high bar to set. Most albums aren't going to do that. Tropical Depression and Mass Flashback are both solid works of their respective kind which I imagine I will play when I'm in the mood for that kind of music. But this month both have largely been overshadowed by my third purchase, which *has* gotten me all worked up. I'm looking forward to writing about it soon! This review probably sounds less enthusiastic than it should for that reason, which I feel bad about. This is good stuff, and if you are ever in the mood for some slightly otherworldly soundtracking with a vintage vibe, you should definitely check Majeure out.