Strange Attractors

New-Zealander Aran Gallagher has turned out a stormer here: nine tracks of fing ace progressive trance that smacks of dancing in the late morning with the sun on your face and a beer in your hand. (“Fing ace“ by the way is a journalistic term, highly technical, of course). Carbon-Based Lifeform kicks things off with jaw-dropping production that you just know is a great sign for the rest of the album. It’s a lesson in how to layer, as the sounds exquisitely fall into place. Dreambody ambles along pleasantly, before suddenly coming alive at about the three minute mark. Freq means serious business. Nurbs is slinky and tasty, and the late melodic flurries are nothing short of killer. Spacechanger is more epic, spacey — the kind of stuff that plays when your feet say, I’m tired can we please go home now, and your brain says, no we fing can’t, shuffle for a bit or something. Return to The Masters is neat, with a n ice breakbeat midsection for when the dance floor needs a rest. Awaken (Materialize) has an intro that says, ‘I say, turn me up. There’s a good chap’ and it opens out into ultra-smooth, expansive stuff. Bliss does exactly what it says on the tin, it’s so chilled it’s almost dead, ands just when you think the album’s done, Freqtal comes and blows every last cobweb away. A collaboration between Freq and Fractal Glider, it starts out proggy until Freq (probably) leaves the room and Fractal decides to belt out a rolling bassline, hits galore, and more energy than the springfield nuclear power plant. Fing well tasty, basically. Proper stuff that doesn’t fail to dazzle. This is genuinely staggering progressive trance.