Exodus

Rating: 6.6  |  Send to Friend

By Al Sotack

A friend of mine has an interesting theory on what she’s coined “paleo-futures,” or the now-antiquated and formerly great apocalyptic sci-fi scenarios of the past.  Our parents and their parents in turn had some pretty hilarious visions of what the future might hold, from little green men to Zardoz.  Today, we have the benefit of learning from our ancestors’ cheese, or for postmodern scavengers like Alex Moulton, exploiting the fossil remnants to create something new.  Moulton’s Exodus harkens back to a simpler, warmer time when electronic was a cute, fuzzy genre as opposed to a giant umbrella that covered endless variation bolstered by seemingly limitless technological advancement.  I’m talking about the seventies, when electronic composers were stepping out of the realm of classical influence while taking its lessons with them, at a time when Mike Hodges and Dino De Laurentiis hadn’t even dreamed up tackling Flash Gordon.  Exodus, like Jean Michel Jarre’s output from that decade, depends on pulsing low-end rhythms and scanning, flickering noises that sound like paleo-future laser guns.  Moulton wanted to create a visual package that locks with his sound, and so he got a hold of PA’s Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell to craft what may be the funniest album cover of ’08.  It is every seventies sci-fi paperback meets every seventies porn by way of every seventies album cover, with a hint of Saddam Hussein’s art collection. Anyway, this album is what plumbing paleo-future depths should be: a fun ride, both comic and nostalgic, that at its best moments sounds like crickets fucking.    
(Expansion Team Records)