I just heard a new album.....The Master Control Project

Hi folks. It's Tony from Neural Dust. Suitcase Records just sent over this new album for a quick review - After Midnight by MCP - Master Control Project. The cover kind of reminds me of like 1960s, 1970s synth hi fi albums that probably high fidelity stereo sound and they've literally got the little stereo symbol down here. But it's also got this cool thing that says bonus 3d glasses book poster stickers pack that came along with it, which has been awesome because it's literally a poster and the comic book and 3D Glasses as promised. But at the heart of it all the thing that's really cool is this pink vinyl, which looks amazing and we'll get to the sound in a second. So when it kind of showed up, I kind of ignored what it said on the poster here, which is only to be played strictly after midnight and just threw it on my record player in my studio with a nice pair of speakers to listen to it. And I'm very glad that I did because it is clear how much work MCP has put into crafting the kind of soundscape and the mix on this album sounds amazing. The album kind of kicks off with now, we are here to kill you some very intro music kind of vibe and some samples and things like that before a voice comes over and invites you to breathe deeply now and they launch into a song that's clearly really led by a solid rhythm section. The liner notes on here say that the main instruments are bass, synth and drums, which are solid throughout. But there's also a whole heap of guests instruments of saxophone, flute, clarinet, guitar, trumpets, and numerous samples throughout which makes sense because it's such a groovy rhythm rhythm album. But it has all these wonderful feature moments of the different instruments on different tracks, which means that each track's kind of got its own vibe, but it doesn't lose a cohesiveness across the whole album. It is really cleverly done and really inviting to listen to uh when I first kind of listened to it. It was so inviting that I forgot that I was meant to be reading the comic book that goes along with it, which I think is meant to be like a visual album thing that goes in. So I kicked off at track two, which is called Mr Doby, which didn't feel like a bad place to start. So I cracked it open, started kind of reading through and I won't spoil the story for you, but it looked amazing and it certainly made for a compelling experience, kind of immerse me in the sounds and the visuals. Well, I'm not sure the comic lined up quite as well as something say as The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side, the move when I was a kid, it did kind of really interesting world of adding something to the music particularly. And the comic invited me to put on the 3d Glasses and for the second half, at which point it made sense why it should be played after midnight or after someone else, usomeone else's things of choice. The album kind of guides itself between bopping head grooves and this kind of psychedelic chill. But all with a reasonably modern hi fi sound, but somehow managed to still hold on to that retro futuristic vibe. Really cleverly done by the MCP crew. Suitcase records, asked that I mentioned my favorite track and unfortunately, I don't have one because every time I put the album on, I just kind of get lost in the immersive of the whole thing so that I no particular track stands out to me. I just tend to listen to the whole album all the way through, which works particularly well on vinyl because it's not inviting to skip back and forth. You just kind of listen and flip and go to the next one. which I suspect is probably exactly what the MCP crew intended. Great album. I'd highly recommend picking up a copy Suitcase, I hope you don't want you this one back because I am keeping this forever. Thanks.