Music Reviews

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Artist: Anthesteria (@)
Title: Phobos 1953 (OST)
Format: CD
Label: Zhelezobeton (@)
Rated: *****
George Belogazlov, the mind behind this album, is also a computer game creator and this album is a soundtrack for a videogame about a soviet bunker theatre of experiments on human psyche. The result is a "classic" post-industrial music that is focused on textures and production rather than innovation or experimentations, just because it's more focused on ambient creation for the game that being a self standing record on his own.
The music has, however, some good points also because it hasn't sonic assaults to easily take the listener's attention: "inside the bunker" has an atmosphere closely related to the package pictures of abandoned offices illuminated by neon. "Mercurial shower facility" relies on a heavy sustain and bell-like noise evoking landscapes of isolations. "Black March" is, perhaps, the best track on the album with slowly moving ethereal synths (3 minutes of beauty). "Shortwave solitudes" features a surprisingly sample of violin.
The packaging is carefully done with few pages, fragments pd a book about mental suggestions, printed in old-style paper unfortunately only in russian and two videos of the video game that gives a more precise view about the whole operation (there's even an old-style tone generator in the gameplay video and pages similar to the one printed in the booklet).
Not the album of the year but a nice record carefully produced.


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