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Most popular of all the EM duos with their 8th album together in seventeen years and it’s another blockbuster of melodic synths & pulsating sequences!
We’ve just had our advance copy of the new ARC album and I can tell you now, this is one stunning set of tracks that will appeal to all synth music fans, regardless as to whether you’re a Mark Shreeve, Ian Boddy, RED SHIFT or ARC fan! You just have to buy this CD … It’s worth the asking price for the closing track alone, but everything that comes before is fantastic too, and it makes me wish that I had been there to witness the show it was culled from!
‘Fleet’ is the 7th concert album by the duo ARC (Ian Boddy and Mark Shreeve), and that fact alone should tell you how popular this musical partnership is in a ‘live’ setting, where they continue to dazzle audiences with their mix of richly harmonic themes, majestic melodies and live electronics, all underpinned by huge slabs of analogue sequencing!
‘Fleet’ was recorded to multi-track at the E-Scape Electronic Music Festival in Halesworth, Suffolk on 13th May 2017. On returning to the studio, this allowed Mark Shreeve to mix and master the resulting performance in fine detail, producing a stunning, dynamic album that preserves all the power and richness of their live show.
The seven tracks, complete with in-between enthusiastic audience ambience, spans almost seventy-eight minutes and is the next best thing to actually being there!
Track by track…
‘Fleet’ is an amazing opener which builds and grows through a series of gorgeous melodies, Mellotron-like synth effects and well throughout percussion towards a wonderful climax.
‘Soar’ is more delicate in nature and is as classic a piece of ‘Berlin-School’ sound sculpting as you will here in 2017, encompassing all of the best elements and sounds of something like TD’s ‘Rubycon’ album all rolled into one glorious eight-minute masterpiece, as ethereal, heavenly, Mellotron choirs softly intertwine with vibrant sequencer patterns – a fantastic piece of EM!
‘Surge’ starts life out as a slow burning atmospheric piece with a strong flowing melodic undercurrent, but it’s not too long before lots of vibrant melodies are added over the gradually expanding rhythmic forces, ending as a major driving track that echoes much of Shreeve’s earlier work. The layering and production on this track are superb – Another track with real bite!
‘Escape’ has a fantastic foreboding Mellotron / bass opening sequence set over s simple background rhythm.
As the intensity increases the Trons become more heaven bound. As the track continues the these stretch out further and the pace of the rhythms steps up a gear or two before a powerful crescendo brings a break on the build-up two minutes before the end, taking it back to a more atmospheric close.
‘Crux’ is the longest track on ‘Fleet’ and it opens with a eerie ambient section before a distant theme starts to eek its way through a misty foreground and it becomes very filmic as this synth mist slowly rolls on over background effects. A soft but sprightly rhythm kicks in and very quickly is ramped up to a live sequencer fest that lovers of Berlin School electronica will lap up big time, with a major run from Shreeve’s “big” Moog set-up circled by an array of sounds and textures from Boddy’s armoury of electronic gadgetry. The track closes to sound of a soft bed of ethereal soft synth textures and the powerhouse engine slowly grinds to a deep halt.
‘Runner’ opens with flying atmospheric effects and phased synth textures, but very quickly develops a strong pulsating rhythmic force. A haunting melodic synth lead prompts a full-blown spacey symphonic theme of the type that’s built to thrill, with a measure of fantastic peripheral effects coming in and out at various moments, with Boddy’s VCS3 getting a good workout during some of these parts.
At just past the five-minute mark a deep heartbeat can be heard during a quieter passage, but the listener’s own cardiac function will skip a beat or two when the thrilling main melodic theme kicks in again for another glowing run around the soundstage with chord changes and effects all running amok.
Towards the close this track becomes almost Jarre-like as it slowly moves through a background whooshing and swishing effects, with added rippling VCS3 effects and delicious waves of haunting Mellotron sounds creating amazing sound textures.
ARC always like to leave the stage with a bang, and for the last couple of years they’ve finished with the track: ‘Cherry Bomb’. Well, this time the duo has outdone even that blockbuster with the encore track: ‘Howl’.
Starting with a whisper, it finishes the album off with a real sledgehammer sound that will surely become a favourite for ARC aficionados everywhere.
Introduced slowly with a minute’s worth of gentle electric piano melody floating over a soft bed of spacey effects, it then bursts into life with a sequencer run and all manner of synth textures rising from below, then a goose bump inducing synth theme emerges majestically to take over before dying down. The pattern is repeated after three minutes, this time with an almost HAWKWIND-like drum rhythm blasting in, and then comes the Trons, and were are into serious thrill seeking mode now and just as you think it can’t get any better, WOW, another huge, sweeping wave of Shreeve melody roars in an drives to the track up into the clouds for a serious high speed trek through the upper atmosphere. Cutting, guitar like sounds then come in to play, producing a sound that Dave Brock would be proud to have in a HAWK track, then suddenly it all goes quiet again, but you feel it’s just the lull before storm, and we wait with baited breath as ghostly Mellotron flutes hover in the air … then IT arrives …the most mighty of wall of melodic powerhouse sound crashes around us as drums pound and synths howl, tearing through the stratosphere as high upon high is reached, bringing the track to one almighty climax!
Want a great album … not a duff minute to be found! As if any were needed, ‘Fleet’ is rock-solid proof that Boddy and Shreeve together and alone are still major forces to be reckoned with in the EM world!
‘Fleet’ was released on 24th October 2017.
ARC (IAN BODDY & MARK SHREEVE) Track List:
01. Fleet (8:39)
02. Soar (8:38)
03. Surge (12:23)
04. Escape (8:07)
05. Crux (14:00)
06. Runner (12:02)
07. Howl (10:44)
TPT - 74:34