Customer Reviews

Kosmonauta

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The follow-up to Syrian's 2003 space-age debut De-Synchronized is here. Once again we find the Italian duo probing the other reaches of the universe. I mean these guys are really into the cosmic motif; the singer refers to himself as Andylab, while the synthesist prefers the moniker Voyager (real name Lorenzo Bettelli). They walk the line somewhere between straight-up synthpop, trance and futurepop.

The music is 100% clean and crisp electronic mostly of the dancefloor variety. The production provides the hard beats, throbbing basslines and sparkling melodies that modern synthpop listeners demand. Melodic hooks and catchy lyrical twists abound. The atmosphere is often set by spacey synth sweeps and liberal usage of samples of communications between Cosmonauts and home base. The vocals often are vocoded and frequently 2 tracks of vocals are present in the same song with one FX treatment playing off another - a successful vehicle in my thinking. "Enforcer", 1 of the 3 singles, and "Future Storm" are similar EBM-style tracks displaying a harder edge than they had previously shown. "Empire of the Sands" strikes me as gentle and dreamy. "Beyond The Sun" is an instrumental that completely disregards the format of every other song on the album. It is not danceable, there are no samples or artificial reminders of the theme and it barely seems electronic... but it's very nice. Another single, "Space Overdrive" is a hyper-bubbly chunk of bleep-blop synthpop that will actually make you feel guilty for liking it. The final single, the trance-influenced "Cosmic Gate," is notable for its use of Italian vocals save for the chorus.

Clearly these space-boys have grown as songwriters and producers over the past 2 years. Everything here flows together with precision. Harmony abounds. Not all of the tracks are perfect, the scope is narrow, and you really have to be a fan of both electronica and sci-fi to get off on this. If you're going to get this, I recommend picking up the limited edition containing an entire 8-track bonus disc with remixes from both this album and their debut.

This is a fantastic CD! One song caresses into another as you enter a planetary journey into the surreal and exponential auditory mindplex. It is wonderful how they use programming and synth to project you into a dream-like and astro-digital-plane. This duo is highly talented and deserve respect and the fortitude of dance-play around the world! If I had the opportunity to make a recording of this magnitude I would be most content.
Syrian takes the futurepop generation to new levels with this masterpiece!
Dave
Dreamenergy@wowway.com