Starforce's Omniversal Oscillations

Out right now on Aphasia Records is the brand new record from Starforce: Ominversal Oscillations. Spanning eleven chapters of stunning synth sounds this album marks a new level of creative fidelity for Starforce and is masterfully crafted from beginning to end. The music contained throughout this album is soulful and vibrant, devoid of the cold of space and is instead luminescent in it's sound stage and structurally peerless.

I was a tad mislead going into this record. From previous Starforce releases, the album's name and track titles and all the other little tidbits I'd gleaned over it's production I was expecting a space synth album with leanings towards soundtrack styled affairs. The eventuality of Ominversal Oscillations could not be further from the truth. Yes, the space thematic is dominant, but musically Starforce's sounds have matured and grown into new spaces, with the shackles of genres being cast aside and the synths allowed to roam wild and powerful throughout their cosmic stage.




It's this expansive range of scenes and emotions that propel Starforce forward into territories of sublime brilliance that live and breathe with character all their own. Even the opening introduction spills over with liquid synth sounds of unknown origin and destination. The tone is set very early on that this album is not what you were probably expecting, and the excitement this causes is utterly marvellous.

Moving into the opening track, Alpine Glow, things become a bit more clear. The pace and melodies are pure synth romance with soaring sounds arranged for maximum emotion, but placed in the context of space they resonate with a deeper and much warmer glow. This isn't the dark and cold void of space we're experiencing, no, this the sounds of life, colour, love and vision. Beings made entirely of light are at one with the universe as their heart beat pulses the stars in unison. The Omniversal Oscillation begins.

The sounds of Starforce are unrestrained in their delivery throughout the album, allowed to really be their own masters with very little human control or interference. Throughout 'Cosmic Voyage' and underlying evolutionary scale seems to usher in new forms and variations of melodies and sounds that are totally organic in their aural presence. As 'Payload Specialist' begins things turn from a free form evolution into a melodic synthscape that is so full of beauty that one does not hear it but instead feels it directly.

Around this point I began to realise the seemingly infinite nuances prescribed to the arrangements. Every single layer of sound is allowed it's own space and life to create it's own personal existence. Repeated listenings are the only way to really pick this up, but it's this massive depth that presents itself to you the more listens you experience. Nothing is simplistic or presented directly to the listener, instead ideas are whispered and suggested allowing for the musical vista to be appreciated in one's own time. The track Celestial Time Lapse (featuring Dynatron) encapsulates this with it's languid pace and myriad of synthesized emotions. Again, the space theme is 'there', it can be felt but the experience intimates much closer, offering a dual planed existence of pure jubilation.

Taking things in even more new directions, the space-funk-breakbeat 'Middletro' which provides a very colourful way point with the most mechanised experience on the album. It's timbre is much more pointed thank previous tracks but one can't deny entrancing diversion's purely magnetic attraction.

The journey continues into 'Simulation 2099', which begins like a whole new adventure. Powerful drums engage lift-off into a new nebula and the synths continue to offer all new colours while percussive fills flash past us at massive speed. The Starforce sound is given an even fresher palette with so many epic sounds to contrast the ethereally sweeping melodies that it creates a cosmic dichotomy of presence and power. To take these energies into even more focused points of light in Spacebridge, launching into a climbing and rolling space OutRun mode that races off into exciting dimensions full of action and danger.

In the title track, Omniversal Oscillations, we find Starforce really displaying what their sound is all about. The music is so full and rich with details that its arrangements are full to overflowing with synthual exuberance that washes over the listener in wave after wave of cosmic crescendos. You can feel the in reverberations of the melodies deep inside and each vignette is entrancing to behold. A remix provided by Epydemic of Summer of 2085 finishes the main chapters of the album before the final piece, 'The Signs' (also with Epydemic) completes Omniversal Oscillations. Summer of 2085 is a reeling display of slow motion moments that freeforms beautifully through an aesthetic of spatial beauty. Unrushed and utterly beautiful.

'The Signs' is a near seven minute epic that finishes off the album in the most perfect way. The sounds are spun from the finest threads possible and woven into a delicate cosmic tapestry that enshrouds you in a zone of pure weightlessness. The music is buoyant and uplifting, rich with care and emotionally charged. The perfect finish to an immensely impressive record.

Starforce's Omniversal Oscillations is presented by Aphasia Records on their Bandcamp page here and I can't encourage any devotee of fine 80s synth sounds to purchase this wondrous experience as soon as time allows.

The construction of this album as one cohesive experience is all encompassing with sounds and arrangements crafted with pure love. Omniversal Oscillations is a truly Reference Synthetix Experience that I hope is remembered for eons in the hearts and minds of listeners across the galaxy.