OPEN WORLDS

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!