Felix NEill

I'm super-stoked that there seems to be a slight resurgence of the bombastic fat analogue soundtrack type of stuff so brilliantly typified by the works of John Carpenter et al.

Inspired by the ghoulish soundtracks of Goblin and the synthetic drama of John Carpenter, Kompakt's new offshoot, Fright records, delivers a disco shocker from Gatekeeper. 'Optimus Maximus' comes on collectors edition granite vinyl and is limited to only 300 copies. These tracks brew a potent blend of darkside Italo with a demonic suspense made to fully grip the floor. While the arpeggiated basslines and drum machines are purely retro vintage, the dynamic synthlines and hi-end processing give this away as a modern production, but that's a large part of its spellbinding charm and should be considered a stone-cold essential for all darkside disco fiends.

This four tracker is consistently great, but my favourite two tracks are "Forgotten" and "Obsidian", both of which are to be found on the second side. This really is a massively clever repositioning of that clunky Carpenter-esque sound to something blisteringly NOW. Enjoy.

For those of you who want more of this stuff (and let's face it, who wouldn't), can I respectfully point you in the direction of a revitalised Illegal Smoking Robot (Welcome back, Tone. You still rule the school), where The Emperor Machine's very good "Space Beyond The Egg" has just been posted. Not exactly coming from the same place, but shall we say, going on the same journey.

Can I also hereby give you notice that another recent classic of the genre will be arriving here at Castles In Space very shortly.

Vinyl rip at 320 Kbps.

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