OPEN WORLDS

At some point between these last couple of years Pierre Zalkazanov a.k.a. ZANOV realized that he in fact is not just a fancy recollector of vintage synths and their respective sounds, but also an important and creative electronic music composer as his short but efficient discography shows. In fact quiet respected and admired in this PA's progressive electronic category by the few who enjoy (or rate) this "unpopular, but widely used in all prog music", sub-genre.

Well ZANOV is back in shape and ready to prove that his past masterworks were not just acts of luck, chance nor accident.

"Open Worlds", 2016, takes many steps ahead its prior sibling "Virtual Future" 2013, as far as music composition goes, and a lot in comparisson to many contemporary P/E's musicians and audiences who still believe that sounding like Tangerine Dream is being true to Berlin School's canons. (that is mere plagiarism folks!)

Well ZANOV is here to guide you through the myriad of still, then, unexplored possibilities and complexities in the fields of this electronic music school's structures.

For starters, as always, if your compositions are great, the rest will follow.

ZANOV's own musical language skills flourish like "old times". That same daring experimental attitude, completely refined by today's technological recording advancements, with the same pitch perfect sense of artistry and everything guided by focused and highly creative inspiration. That ZANOV the one who created "Green Ray" (1976) and "In Course of Time" (1983), is back to set the record straight.

Music wise, one of its remarkable attributes, among others, rely on stopping time, our time, and recreating a contemporary, futuristic retrospective of electronic music which expands back and forth covering 40 years in minutes. All done with mastery and attention to detail but above all with his personal musical idiom. (Which I always applaud.)

But, as I mentioned, not everything stops there, his contemporary electronic music proposals share big time and are highly promising, as to understand that ZANOV is back to write his future and the Progressive Electronic one by the way.

A perfect 8, 9 songs album, must be in your PE collection, you deserve it!

****4.5 PA stars.

I sure didn't have to wait long for a new Zanov release! Zanov was an artist I only discovered in 2011 and a year later I bought Green Ray and Moebius, and in 2014 bought In Course of Time, all of them vinyl. Amazing stuff, I only wished I knew of Pierre Salkazanov (his real name) years before. Virtual Future was basically the completion of a fourth album left sitting around since the early '80s because he didn't feel there was much of a future for him in music, not to mention it took about three years to get In Course of Time released (it was recorded in 1979, released in Canada first in 1982, in France in 1983). So during that 30+ year gap he turned to more mainstream work, and by 2014 he had more free time to return, buy an Arturia Origin, complete that fourth album and had it released as Vitual Future (it was originally planned to be entitled Nous Reprenons Notre Avenir and to have spoken poetry, but by 2014 when he returned, he thought the spoken dialog would be a bad idea and make it all instrumental, and of course retitling it Virtual Future, plus digitizing it and completing the rest of it with the Arturia Origin, while the old recording featured his old gear).

Open Worlds is unlike Virtual Future as this is 100% conceived and recorded in the 21st Century, a totally up to date version of the Zanov sound, and it's nice to see he did not sell out in any way, shape or form, but there really isn't any reason to sell out when you're releasing this stuff yourself (Zanov Music is, of course, Pierre Salkazanov's own label, I only hope to see that label used to reissue his first three albums). The songs are a bit shorter than on previous albums, but that doesn't matter, just means he now has nine compositions. What I really like is the combination of analog and digital synth sounds, a contemporary sound and production that's not overly sterile. The music often has a synthetic feel, but that's normal, even what he did in the 1970s, but even the synthetic feel of his music often has a nice spacy beauty to it, plus a nice hi-tech sci-fi vibe to it. This is the way I want more contemporary progressive electronic music to be like. It's nice to see that after a long silence that he hasn't lost it one bit. Again, this comes with my highest recommendation!

This one is much better and more adventurous than the previous one.

It still sounds really oldschool; almost like listening to a Jean Michel Jarre or Tangerine Dream album.

Again, the spacey sounds dominate the music, lots of ARP sequences and tasteful melodies. Zanov takes you on a futuristic trip and manages to be exciting and thrilling throughout the whole album. Although sometimes it's hard to really discover the solos and melodies, the atmosphere of the album is enough to keep you entertained.

There's not really a single song on this album that stands out form the rest. All the songs are of equal quality and splendour. To me personnaly though, the opener Electric Dust Fields and the close (Remote Impact) had the most impact (pun intended).

This is one of those albums that sounds the best with headphones and a calm environment.

French electronica artist Pierre Zalkazanov is staging a comeback with two albums in the last three years after an absence of 30 years. Though hailed as "the French answer to the legendary Berlin Kosmische scene" I find his slowed down, scaled down soundscapes to be more akin to the spacey, melody-oriented music of 1970s-to-Blade Runner-era VANGELIS and even Oxygène-era JEAN-MICHEL JARRE. The themes, melodies and layers feel almost too simple, syrupy, and slow. It's almost New Age massage/meditation music! I feel that Zanov's music here lacks originality and freshness.

Favorite song: 2. "Next Trip" (5:30) (9/10)

Good songs: 5. "Robot Valley" (4:17) (8/10); "Remote Impact" (6:03) (8/10)

A three star album; good but not exceptional and definitely not essential.