ARC - Fleet (2017)

Synthesist and DiN label head Ian Boddy let us know about a new release from his ARC collaboration with Mark Shreeve.

Fleet (DiN53) is the seventh live concert album by the duo. It was recorded at the E-Scape Electronic Music Festival in Halesworth, Suffolk on 13th May 2017. Shreeve mixed and mastered the resulting multitracks to create an album of pure electronic music, in the tradition of the Berlin masters.

ARC shared a short video, embedded above, that combines footage from the E-Scape performance with the final audio. It offers a preview of tracks on Fleet and also insight into Boddy and Shreeve’s technique.

Fleet is a live album, but like previous ARC albums, is mixed so that audience sounds are heard primarily at the beginning and end of tracks, and in between is unadulterated electronic goodness.

The album moves between broader melodic electronica sections and more driving, sequenced ones. The album opener, Fleet, starts this off, introducing a phased mellotron melody that’s accented with percussive punctuation. Halfway into the track, though, ARC reworks the melody with interlocking sequenced accompaniment, building to a thunderous conclusion, and then dying away to nothing.

Tracks like Soar show that there’s still a lot of interesting places to explore in Berlin territory. The track mixes glorious Mellotron-style strings and choir with interwoven synth sequences, arranging the elements to take you on a hypnotic sonic journey.

One of the highlights of Fleet is the track Crux, which begins with with a distant Mellotron flute echoing across a murky psychedelic landscape. The track transitions into deep synth drones, from which emerge white noise percussion and a pulsating collage of sequences. The track peaks with a distorted synth baseline that seethes with energy, surrounded by arpeggiated synth lines that echo between channels.

Tracklist:
01. ARC - Fleet
02. ARC - Soar
03. ARC - Surge
04. ARC - Escape
05. ARC - Crux
06. ARC - Runner
07. ARC - Howl