STARFARER - The Dark
Review by Mike Templar
Starfarer is an American electronic musician from California. Since 2017, he started making space themed synthwave music inspired by 80s sci-fi movies and soundtracks using a variety of software synths in his productions. His music is full of energy, sci-fi imagery, dreamlike demeanor, and dark synth craft.
His newest adventure The Dark is a concept album with a short story accompanying his spacewave and cyberpunk album and with some amazing collaborations from other artists. After listening to the album several times I would assign it mainly to the genre cyberpunk, and in my opinion it can be put in the sphere where Perturbator is located. Before I draw too many conclusions now, let's have a look at the tracks first.
The album starts with a shorter track called Upload and has a Matrix soundtrack feeling that is common with the subsequent songs. The title name and the first few seconds of the song give clues that humans and AI melt together somehow. And indeed, this is the case if you read the enclosed short story beforehand, which, by the way, is also available in audio format; Starfarer included a link to the audiobook that was read by a professional reader. And the short story ends with the protagonist’s consciousness being uploaded to a mainframe. However, not too much should be revealed at this point. The short story ends where the album begins.
It continues in Matrix style with the track The Dark and keeping with the story Starfarer tells the first moments in the „mainframe" with this song. It bangs with droning synths in wide stereo width, while a steady beat with some horror synth-like melodies drives the song forward. What strikes me, and not only in this track, is that Starfarer puts a lot of little side effects into his songs that are the icing on the cake, so to speak, of his cyperpunk songs.
The next song Highrider (feat. DreamReaper) has a more epic and even more cinematic feel. At the beginning, big orchestra drums rattle through a big hall, which then change into a steady beat with e-drums and are complemented with great melodies and short vocoder interludes.
Sheersha's talents are showcased in the song Safe Yourself: Her vocals accompany a spherical-beginning song accompanied by a fragile piano melody, and then tension rises until a strong beat kicks in and a distorted bass with a strong stereo effect plants itself in the upper regions of your brain. The song later comes back to calmer parts with the second chorus, which is replaced by a part with half-time beat I think, until the song ends with a brilliant outro. The lyrics and the song spread an anxious situation to escape without being paralysed. Sheersha brings this mood with her great voice excellently.
The following song The Fear follows the previous theme perfectly. It is a collaboration with Magnavolt and again a strong instrumental song with great synthesizers and a bass dialogue that is fun to listen to.
The next song is a really nice track with the voice of King Protea. Great dreamy synth pads and a beautiful vocal melody, which was superbly realised by the singer. My absolute favourite, with great in-between parts and a round composition; another track where it shows what a talented musician Starfarer is. It's worth listening carefully to the lyrics; an interesting story between dream and reality and with a voice that gives you goosebumps.
Braindance is another firework of musical pleasure with distorted basses and a quasi screaming solo synthesizer as well as cyberpunkish effects. Dark, hard and slapping, just the way I like it.
Deep Space is the soundtrack of a mystical space odyssey and another favourite of mine: absolute listening pleasure and a song that, in my opinion, tells a whole story. I think few in the scene can do that with just one song. I want to see the film with it.
Andromeda is a fast and almost techno-like dance track with machine noise effects. I don't know if one could already speak a little of the genre industrial here.
Pain Switch has a long dark intro and I thought Starfarer had already created every roaring and distorted bass you can create. But far from it! The bass you hear from 1:40 onwards surpasses all others :) The song is another dark & slappy cool track.
The end track refers to the apparatus Medusa, which connects the protagonist of Starfarer's short story to the mainframe, to which humans can upload one's consciousness and thus become immortal, as advertised… It's an honourable closing track with lots of tension-generating effects and again with an attention-grabbing bass.
The album is an absolutely homogeneous work and continues to tell the dystopian story of the protagonist, whose starting point is a short story, which is also included with the album in audio format and is professionally read aloud or as Starfarer says: “These are a collection of memories from his time spent in The Dark.” Musically, this album is an absolute listening pleasure and let's call the overall genre, cinematic & spacey cyberpunk synthwave, which should not be missing in any music library of science fiction & cyberpunk fans. The guest artists round off the great work with their extraordinary contributions, and Starfarer hands us an album that is professionally produced and is really fun and presents his talents in full.
For more Starfarer, visit starfarermusic.com
