SELF-REPLICATING INTELLIGENT SPAWN

Self-Replicating Intelligent Spawn sounds like a very successful attempt at fusing ambient soundscapes, Berlin-school styled synth explorations, and modern electro-house into a wonderfully pleasant listening experience. Unlike Przemyslaw Rudz's other releases, this album has a much more personal- and inner-space kind of atmosphere rather than a cosmic outer-space feel, which is in no way a bad thing ? actually, it's quite refreshing. I honestly wish more modern electronic musicians would take on this kind of personal, cerebral, and sometimes even romantic kind of personal musical experience.

Running at almost 70-minutes in length, this album comes off as decently diverse, which I've personally always felt to be good for just about any album, but the length of this album is matched with great quality control. Self-Replicating Intelligent Spawn starts off with "Stroll Along the Paths on a Chip", which is a perfect example of the more personal atmosphere present throughout this album; it sounds almost like a more thought-out version of something Depeche Mode might have written if they never had a vocalist, and comes off as sounding slightly intimate and almost romantic even though the light electronic beats carry the tune along. Since the first track starts the listener off at a more at- home kind of feel, the second track, "Neuronal Disorders Inside a Silicon Brain", is much more of an intuitive sonic exploration that cues multiple electronic elements (resonances, cosmic howling, droning blackness, propulsive beats, etc.), individually throughout its nearly 14-minute length, and every one of those elements comes into play in the conclusion of the track and serves as a wonderfully constructed climax. The next three tracks are nearly danceable electro-house fused with Berlin-school styled electronic elements scattered throughout and are wonderful at progressing the album, and my favorite of these three tracks is "Short Message to Tomorrow", which starts with a tinny-sounding electrified acoustic-guitar type sound and a very strong beat that really gets the blood moving. Of course, all of this leads up to the nearly 24-minute monster centerpiece of the album, "Giant Leap for Mankind", which is a long exploration of Klaus Schulze-type Berlin-School electronic cosmic exploration with modern touches from electro-house and beautiful soaring synths. This track mutates itself just enough throughout its runtime to make is thoroughly exciting and compelling. And then the album ends the same way that it started ? with a very at-home sounding track (the track is called "Home Again") that features some soothing jazz saxophone for an added element of organic musicianship, and this track serves as a return to home from the previous spatial tracks of cosmic travel.

Self-Replicating Intelligent Spawn is a magnificent album that I feel could be enjoyed by anyone who is interested in this type of cosmic electronic music with a peripheral story- telling feel and compelling atmospheres with ample amounts of creative energy.