Album Review: Pangaea Ultima by Steve Moore

Rain begins to pour as a police Spinner rises vertically from the ground in thick streams of smoke, which run neatly from the jet engine like a concentrated efflux of fog descending over the city. Circling above looped video advertisements and towering structures, the vehicle glides slowly to the sound of Vangelis’ spiraling synth keys, electronic effects, and glitches. It’s an expertly shot sequence in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, one of many future-gazing films that opted for synthesized music in soundtracking the depiction of its characters as they connected with an unknowable world.

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Like so many experimental synth artists, Steve Moore makes a lot of music. In addition to playing in bands like Zombi and Titan, last year alone he partnered with Daniel O'Sullivan for a synth pop album as Miracle and released two full-lengths under his own name. Pangaea Ultima, his new album on the increasingly prominent Spectrum Spools, could be his most high profile solo release yet.Moore has been doing this kind of thing for a long time now, and a certain knowing quality shines through Pangaea Ultima.

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Prolific ambient knob twiddler Steve Moore's latest release comes after two intriguing EPs for Long Island Electrical Systems where he pursued a thick and dirty analogue sound. Sadly, it appears that this was a short-lived diversion. Pangaea Ultima is a cleaner, sprawling affair, but one lacking the ingenuity of some of Moore's more esoteric works. Swathes of the album are crafted from vast sheets of sound that hold both the faults and the redeeming qualities of the album.

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Keeping up with the musical output of Steve Moore can be a somewhat bewildering process, a mark, perhaps, of the way that pre-digital synth sounds have proliferated once more across a broad cross-section of contemporary music makers. In the last couple of years, he’s released dance music for the labels L. I.

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