Synthetic Season 2 [Vinyl]

On Synthetic: Season 2, Halifax pop artist and composer Rich Aucoin continues his journey through the history of synthesizers. The second entry in his quadruple LP series once again features an armada of the world’s most rare, historic, and highly sought after electronic instruments. Gaining access to the collections of Calgary’s National Music Centre and LA’s Vintage Synthesizer Museum, Aucoin ran amok on machines to create four albums of thrilling, transporting instrumental music.

Each song on Synthetic: Season 2 conjures a world of its own, combining Aucoin’s melodic sensibilities with textural, genre-agnostic experimentation. The album swerves into action with the wiggling synths and thunderous drum breaks of “Wav” – recorded on the Hammond Novachord from 1939 and considered the very first analog, fully polyphonic synthesizer – stacking hooks like a cinematic training montage as it climbs toward the first of many transcendent conclusions. “Shift” changes course into eerie, frostbitten industrial territory with rubbery beats that bounce like pogo sticks, switching tempos unexpectedly and dissolving into skittering arrays of sound.

The squelching groove of “Pure” brings a touch of ’90s French House, like Daft Punk jet-setting around the world. Six minutes pass in a flash during this playful brain-dance. “Space” is a thumping banger built upon chiming, subaquatic beats that slice through thick drones and filter disco drops. Its passages of extraterrestrial techno tranquility will make you feel like an astronaut floating in the inky void, making shapes in zero gravity.

- Jesse Locke