MEMORIES AND DREAMS

A lovely quirky album, this is: energetic, optimistic and colourful jazz fusion with an emphasis on old-school synthesizers. Keyboard player Cody Carpenter is the son of famous director John Carpenter, and while the music on this album doesn't really bear a lot of resemblance to his old man's film scores, there certainly is a heavy element of nostalgia for the 80s and 90s to be heard here. For one, a lot of tracks show influence from video game scores from those decades, specifically from Japanese composers such as Jun Senoue and Yasunori Mitsuda. Just listen to the lively adrenaline-pumping opener "Attract Mode", and tell me you can't imagine hearing something like this in Sonic The Hedgehog or Mario Kart; could the moody, melancholic "Kindness Of The Goddess" not serve as the perfect background score for a peaceful moment of reflection in a 16-bit medieval RPG? How about using "Oppression" as the final boss battle in the next Contra game, Konami?

Sadly, the other main influence on this album is one I'm not all that crazy about, namely Van Halen-esque arena rock; it's not overtly present but it still rears its ugly head here and there. Some tracks such as "Daybreak" kind of overdo the cheesy bombastic 80s rock stylizations and end up slightly annoying, but on most tracks Carpenter manages to insert enough cool chord progressions and syncopated rhythms to distract from that, and pretty much every song on here sports a catchy riff that's sure to draw your attention. I will say that Carpenter doesn't seem very skilled at ending his compositions, as most tracks just sort of stop abruptly, but this is but a minor complaint. I find this album a very enjoyable experience in spite of its flaws.