Artist: the atlas amp
title: Oscillator
keywords: ambient, experimental, indie, rock, instrumental, post-rock, soundscape
This EP starts (unlike most other EP’s that we have reviewed) with a track named ‘Sonora’. It will slowly introduce itself, suck you out of your very own comfort zone and throws you without a warning in the musical world of the atlas amp’. A project by a talented musician named Chris Corrado who is not only responsible for the musical content, recording and artwork but also for the spectacular mixing that these tracks are rich off. In fact it’s this mixing that makes these instrumental tunes different than your standard post-rock soundscape adventure.
It’s like all the good special effects from the better movies are erased from the screen and setup to be implanted as digital highlights of this refreshing way of presenting music. If you listen to the first track and went through the gates to be projected in this artist own world you probably know quite well what I mean.
When arrived at the zone occupied by The Atlas Amp the artist greets it’s listeners with a humane and warm setup of music that has a thematic feel to it. First there is a little conversation, an warm guitar melody and then a form of epic space ending that gives again the feeling as if this is actually a soundtrack for a spectacular movie and we should have squeezed out a tear while munching a big box of popcorn cinema style right now. In other words; it’s pretty good stuff!
The second track (Vega) is like a complete different scene featuring water, a shaker and a nervous sounding guitar. It’s again a good soundtrack that would fit a scene of a freshly shipwreck survivor who we call for fun ‘Johnny Depp’ that wakes up surprised with a lost memory (his memory was probably still on board of the ship) on the beach and for no reason whatsoever starts to run over the sand, over the unknown hills, through the forest. Johnny Depp keeps running like a train, bare feet through the landscape all shot with spectacular camera angels. The music comes with accents that highlight the beauty of the island and the actor, the running desperate action and the hot weather. He runs all the way around the island until arriving at the same place he had stranded earlier on. He looks at his face in the water as the music stops and the screen fades out. ‘I’m Johnny Depp?’
‘Readyready Irdial’ is keeping up the hot burning sun sound captured in the music. Warm guitar that finds a real good friend in a drumbeat; that makes this track different than the precious ones. This is by definition the theme track of the movie and not just a music score that highlights the action on screen. And what a theme song it is! It starts with some soft thematic Morse code bleeps and some radio communication chatter that makes way for a warm dramatic guitar based theme that could be a well fit for a tough main character.
When the beat rolls in the song give a real strong image of some openings screen with the openings title and a landscape featuring our main hero in a car or on a motor driving through an almost empty highway somewhere in a rough location. A desert would be perfect, or maybe the Grand Canyon or something more adventurous even. The music rocks spaciously towards the end of the tune and you feel like the ‘bad guys’ are going to bite dust when the hero featured in this story (might it be you?) is reaching his or her destination.
The track ‘Dandelion’ goes for an atmospheric atmosphere (with soft evening crickets in the background) that fits a moment of love and affection between the movie star and his conquered new found love. It’s a romantic moment with fingers interlocking each-other and sweet kisses are exchanged under a perfect moonlight. It’s basically one of the happy highlights of the movie.
The lovely sounding ‘Time & Time’ track goes for a fine feel good moment that makes you feel like listening to a wonderful happy end: A romantic one with two loved ones riding off in to the horizon. When the music opens up wider you can see other sub characters of the story coming together to celebrate a potential wedding and good days to come in the future. Everyone is all smiles as they make way for the scrolling credits. A perfect end for a wonderful release. Someone please shoot a movie based on these tracks as that would be an absolute cinema pearl.
http://theatlasamp.bandcamp.com/album/oscillator
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