DOMINION

When Zopp released their first album, I became aware of it and I gave it a listen since I am a fan of instrumental music and I wanted to see what these guys were doing, but I failed to understand it. Still, when I learned that they had released a second album in 2023, I thought I should give it a brief listen and thankfully so. Ryan Stevenson, the mastermind of the band worked on this album for three years and played almost all the instruments except the drums to write an album deep-knee in the Canterbury scene - perhaps to a fault. Unlike the first album, this time he added vocals on some songs and although he isn't a great singer, his voice is decent (but I do believe that the songs could do with a better vocalist). The album consists of seven tracks and two of them are actually intros like the opener Amor Fati which leads to You and it is a very strong number. After that comes the instrumental Bushnell Keeler which is my favourite of the album and at this point I feel very pleased with myself that I decided to listen to the album. I said that there are two intros but come to think of it Uppmärksamhet could be considered as a third. Reality Tunnels is one more great instrumental song, even though here was the first time that I thought to myself that I could do with some diversity at the keyboard sounds and secondly the thought occured to me that the music was becoming a bit self- referential. Wetiko Approaching melts into the epic Toxicity and just because up so far there are only three fully- fledged songs, it was up to Toxicity that would tip the balance and the album would be either remarkable or simply good. Unfortunately, it didn't win me over although it has its moments, but maybe not as many to cover 14 minutes of music and I did 'try' to like it by listening to it several times. I read that Stevenson wanted to incorporate influences from the Australian scene like King Gizzard which is a scene that I don't like at all and maybe that's an extra reason for that. I am a bit disappointed because I feel I could have liked it more, but all in all it's an album that I will keep revisiting - and hopefully change my mind for the better in the future.