AUTOMAT

A misterious album that's sort a of a miracle that exists, done "only" by using the sounds on the MCS70 monophonic synthesizer, a musical instrument that was never released to the public and that only had 1 unit made (the prototype), one of the rarest instruments out there but certainly not THE rarest (there was one instrument that was only developed in the 1800, played once and never recorded).

The synthesizer ended up on an Area album (wich i'll probably review) that used the instrument to some minor extents, so the bigest outing that demonstrates what the MCS70 could do is this album.

1.- Automat 5/10 This 17 minute 3 part piece was the contribution to this album done by Claudio Gizzi. The first thing of notice that made me like this album and this theme at first was the unique sound, but after listening to it for more than 2 years, i can say that it has wore off pretty quickly, not the sound, that's still fascintating, but the theme is just too repetitive, has some good ideas here and there yet i don't think this track has much going on to be 17 minutes long.

2.- Droid 7/10 Here onwards, every song was made by Romano Musmarra and it shows, he is clearly the one that was most inspired in this project, the 3 pieces writen by him explore different aspects of what the instrument could do right, most of wich are space themed and scifi stuff. This theme here is really catchy, and has some like robot effects but it doesn't give me that droid feel. It's also a theme that gets quite repetitive, atleast it has the decency to be much shorter than its predecesor and i also think that it sounds better overall.

3.- Ultraviolet 5/10 This theme explores the scary scifi aspect that this instrument does. It has many similarities to the X-Files theme (wich it says it was done in 1996 but i swear that i heard it somewhere much earlier, it think that it was done by Delia Derbyshire but i can't find it) and it could very well work in the context of that series, i must say though, it is a really slow piece, sound like a really easy improv piece that anyone with musical knowledge can do.

4.- Mecadence 8/10 The final track here is the one that explores the most, the sounds concieved here and the composition are really cool, sadly though, this theme was released in an incomplete state, but that's ok, what we have here is really good and its a really good way to end this album. It leaves me wondering, what if...

So, the biggest star here is the MCS70, i must say that the sounds it produced are better than the compositions made to showcase it, even though i could say that both artists explored to good extents in different areas what this could do, it was not enough, i would really love to hear more from the MCS70.

I will give the MCS70 a 100 but this album gets 63/100 wich means 3 Stars.

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