Uranium: Modular Cinematics

takes us back to the days when synthesizers were the exclusive playthings of lab-coated scientists and tweed-coated academics.

Hunkered down in the fluorescence of university music department basements, they coyly spun the dials on literal tons of gear”transformers, tubes, oscilloscopes”but not a computer in sight.

Difference and repetition were emerging as transgressive symbols of absolute freedom. Musique concrète was showing up on Beatles records. Hitchcock's hyperreal synthetic birds brought on the night terrors. Uranium: Modular Cinematics is rooted in that era, with bowed strings, sustained cymbal textures, abstracted acoustic instruments, natural element sounds, and of course the massive presence of the mighty modular synthesizer.

Producer Quincas Moreira has the kind of artistic restraint that allows producers to step back and let musical instruments speak simply, in their own voices, unburdened by undue human interference. The results are reflected in sonic environments that can inform and influence listeners' subjective perceptions and emotional landscapes in a detached and unobtrusive way.

Always natural and never forced, the 52 loops contained in Modular Cinematics harbor as many interpretations as there are situations.