AUTOMAT

It seems to me the important thing about electronic music, the heart and drive of the form, is in how it sounds. Sure the compositions are crucial and thematic direction vital, but it's the depth of a recording, how it vibrates, hums, quavers and trembles, that makes the difference between common and outstanding. I can dig a magnificent sounding cacophony more than an awful sounding calliope. It should penetrate you physically, reach down into your aural heart. You should be immersed, enveloped. Swallowed.

And since Automat was a singular project led by one of Italy's best low-budget scorers, Claudio Gizzi ~ using Mario Maggi's never-actually-manufactured Memory Controlled Synthesizer built in 1977 ~ you know there's going to be a transmission worth receiving. Nuanced chirps tug on monster title cut 'automat', taken up by the alloys of the MCS70 describing the cybernetic landscape and pulling us through a long flight over alien murals of unknown colors and ores. Present is Giorgio Moroder, Goblin, and other suspects but as is often the case with a one-off, Automat is more satisfying than any of its influences, more pure of purpose. Better.

Granted the twenty-minute title resides within the dance-beat tempo and reflects ZYX's Italodisco of the early 80s, but it's also a deliberate piece of movement in sound that develops with texture, atmosphere and mood. 'Droid' has high strangeness as a machine comes undone, 'ultraviolet' enters the Mutara Nebula with us in tow, and cybernetic 'mecadence' is industrial one moment, light & astral the next.

A record that is both terribly dated and a perfect starter for the Electronic Prog virgin, Automat is well worth investigating for anyone quietly curious about, or not normally drawn to, the subgenre.