Multicast Dynamics - Ancient Circuits (2020)

Multicast Dynamics returns with a sixth studio album but one that marks something of a new chapter. Ancient Circuits is a departure from previous works on Denovali and one that stands the project aside as a powerful electronic act that tells stories while also serving up heavy hitting soundscapes that are persuasive, unexpected and disturbing.

By now, Multicast Dynamics is revered for absorbing and journeying albums that are as immersive as a film or evocative as an audio book. Since 2015, long players like Aquatic System, Outer Envelopes, Continental Ruins and Lost World have explored imagined civilisations and futuristic histories in infinite detail.

Ancient Circuits is another album with a very real sense of space - it places you in the middle of a sparse yet richly detailed world, with sonic illusions and synthetic realisations from a post-human world. Listening to this album is like being lost deep in the fabric of space itself, where ancient cosmology and modern technology intersect.

Each of the four 25-minute pieces are clearly demarcated yet sequential stories that introduce new characters and are drawn out of long and complex studio experiments. They are collages of sound that glimmer, disturb, shine, dive deep and explore new realms. Sonic gradients and electronic pulses add dynamics and drive as you zoom in to microscopic levels of detail and revel in the information and density you find when you get there.

This album is about technology that is well advanced yet no longer in existence today. An interface that has been heavily decayed after surviving many waves of history and extreme conditions and shows the signs of heavy wear and tear. It could well be a type of interface located in a hidden room, surrounded by organic debris and material decay, but one still responsive enough through a series of toggles, switches and dials to manipulate a sensory world.

Ancient Circuits is ambient so arresting that it pulls you deep inside. It is suspensory, storytelling music that keeps you on edge. It is as emotionally stirring as it is mentally evocative. Once again, it's an album that finds Multicast Dynamics draw together visual art, sound design, cinematic ideas and conceptual thinking to come up with a work that is a multi-sensory exploration that puts you as the central character in an expressive musical world.