Atlas Industries - Vector Seven

The cyberpunk synthwave aesthetic has been overly romanticized in modern art time and time again. Make no mistake, Vector Seven romanticizes it no less, but it's just so clean.

"Atlas Industries" carries in its title the echo of a futuristic atmosphere, and if you deign to take a taste of the production, you'll find just that—a typification of everything 'cyberpunk' stands for in music, a homage to the dark, science-fiction underside of the synthwave world, in all its midnight cinematics and high-speed-chases glory. It's a simple record, to be sure, but it needs no wild experimentation to get its ideas across—Vector Seven seems to recognise this, and he plays down bluntly stereotypical yet powerful cards to make up the majority of this project's tracklist. And yes, 'bluntly stereotypical' isn't typically a positive quality, but something about the certainty of what "Atlas Industries" wants to be is appealing to me. Think strong basslines, massive synth runs, polished mixdowns; it's a finely tuned album, alright. What sets it apart from other moody cybersynth albums, though, is that "Atlas Industries" doesn't particularly care about being moody. The atmosphere speaks for itself, and that atmosphere is cyberpunk, simple and pure, and that means it doesn't have to be dark and edgy. Vector Seven reflects this, too. The instrumentation and sampling he brings in is a classy addition, whether that be the guitar solos featuring in "Tears In The Rain", the vocal chops of "Machine Queen", or the all-out guns-blazing energy of "Call Of The Void" and "Shellshock", and it gets away from the repetitive basslines and synth lines of other, moodier (as aforementioned) albums of this category—and though "Atlas Industries" is still a little repetitive itself, largely in its midsection, it does a good job of attempting to be otherwise. To me, the beauty of this record comes from its ability to do bad things really well, to the point where they become assets instead of vices, whether that be the stereotypical themeing or the repetitive atmosphere. Mix that in with a clean production undertone and some wonderfully cinematic atmospheres, and you're golden.

Almost. Almost golden. Here we are again—what's the flaw, this time? What flaw could possibly drop this all the way down to the 70/100 range? It's the runtime. "Atlas Industries" stands at just 7 tracks, under 30 minutes of runtime, which, by my standards, is pretty short for an LP; yet, standalone, that might not even be that much of a problem. But for "Atlas Industries", a record that thrives on its atmosphere and themeing, the runtime is unforgivable. Whilst Vector Seven has done everything else to a fairly high quality, the one thing he failed to deliver on was the length, and unfortunately that is solely responsible for "Atlas Industries" to be unable to justify itself. The production and cinematics, however accomplished they are, are cut far too short.