Goo Age - Open Zone (2022)

Adrian Wright’s goo age project is incredibly varied but always delicate and beautiful, the sort of music that I associate with little abstract gardens of sound. It also reminds me of the era where unknown artists would have small carefully curated soundcloud pages that felt like their own totally insular and unique worlds. The Open Zone album is first and foremost full of precise electronic sounds, crisp high end chirps and deep, pure sine wave bass hits; the careful placement of each element reminds me a little of artists like Holly Waxwing, Visible Cloaks, or Motion Graphics, utilizing high definition spine tingling sound design to full effect. Supporting the electronics is a layer of acoustic, or at least physically modeled, instrumentation: guitar plucks, mallet hits, woodwind accompaniment, brush-work percussion, it all merges into a sort of hyperreal electro-acoustic vibe, but in focused 4D space or something; I would definitely recommend listening loudly on headphones or through decent speakers.