Carl A. Finlow releases things under a slew of aliases, but he has to get some credit for the quality of what he puts out.
This alias is Silicon Scally, which is mainly electro music, which is Carl’s primary output.
A lot of the 2005 Dark Matter album, from which this is taken, is more experimental, but “Toneworks” is easier to recognise as an electro track.
It’s a song for which the word “retro-futurism” could have been invented. It’s a paranoid, robotic journey that might easily be placed on the soundtrack of a particularly edgy late 80s Japanese video game.
The beat chugs along at a fair pace, and is joined by a muted snare, with a smorgasbord of synths. One of the best riffs in the piece is the choppy four part beep, that rises up every now and then.
The song has many layers of sound, all electronic and feeling slightly rusty. There’s something quite dystopian about the nervous, unfeeling, and unrelenting nature of the track. You could imagine Terminator listening to this in his downtime…
Quite a curiosity!