Location: Missoula, Montana
Country: USA
Genre: Experimental, ambient, electronic
Full Length: Biomechanical Plasma Synthesis
Format: Digital album
Label: Independent
Release date: June 4, 2021
Vroslyd is the brainchild of Rashid Abdel Ghafur, the force behind the experimental/ambient/avant garde/noise project Zebulon Kosted (who just made a split with the US black metal/dungeon synth project CaveGhoul available for streaming along with a new track entitled “Glorious Ghosts of Ganymede”). “Biomechanical Plasma Synthesis,” the debut release of this project, tells a story that could as easily have been written as a dark science fiction tale. It’s about scientific experiments to combine human flesh with machinery, experiments that took centuries to perfect but end up going horribly wrong, leading to the fall of an entire civilization. There are no lyrics or spoken word parts imparting this tale, just song titles and a myriad of minimalistic ambient sounds meant to give substance to the vast cold emptiness of space, in the midst of which lies the countless worlds of an extraterrestrial civilization which we don’t know exists in the distant past or the distant future. As I listened to this album it reminded me of several science fiction classics, especially those that depicted earthbound or stellar darkness and goaded you to think: “2001,” the original “Alien,” the first two “Terminator” movies, “Blade Runner” besides old “Twilight Zone” and “Outer Limits” episodes, John W. Campbell’s short story “Twilight” and Ray Bradbury’s short story “Kaleidoscope”. Each song title tells a little more of the situation faced by this society and kept me interested in hearing what was to come next. The use of a single keyboard sound to tell the story from song to song was effective and I could feel the cold darkness converging around me. My only complaint is there were far too many tracks to listen to, which somewhat took up too much time to listen to the entire album. Many of the tracks were brief and I was thinking maybe it could have been condensed into fewer and longer tracks to tell the story with. Still I can appreciate the direction Ghafur is taking with his solo projects and I hope he continues exploring colder and darker territory. –Dave Wolff
Track list:
1. In the Vrozlydian Empire...
2. ...home to many alien races and robot slaves...
3. ...a process has been perfected over the centuries...
4. ...to combine flesh with machine...
5. ...attaining the best traits of both seamlessly...
6. ...in the secret laboratories of the home world...
7. ...the scientists and technicians of Vrozlyd...
8. ...create the biomechanical servants...
9. ...used by the Emperor...
10. ...to conquer and subjugate...
11. ...these processes remain elusive to spies...
12. ...attempting to create a breakaway syndicate...
13. ...bent on controlling economic and military interests...
14. ...for the sake of their abstract idea of freedom...
15. ...a lie told to children...
16. ...to calm their minds...
17. ...when awoken at night frightfully contemplating...
18. ...a difficult reality continuously surrounding them...
19. ...soon the creatures created in the laboratory will control...
20. ...not only the creation of their children...
21. ...the fate of hundreds of civilizations...
22. ...and the most sophisticated future technologies...
23. ...they will be capable of telepathy...
24. ...due to the radioactive mutations caused by the factory complex...
25. ...in time all new life will be...
26. ...biomechanical perfection...
27. ...never to be controlled...
28. ...by an outside source...
29. ...unintentionally bringing about...
30. ...the end of the Vrozlydian Empire.
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