3.5

Release data:

Zanov – Open Worlds
CD/DIGITAL DOWNLOAD, Zanov Music, 2016

It is not unusual to put an idea or project on hold with the intent of returning, but when the gap is a three decades long musical hiatus there is no set formula on how to restart the musical journey.

For Zanov, the bridging link came in the form of an unfinished concept sketched over 30 years ago, an ideal warm up project. The album became the 2015-release “Virtual Future”, and to complete it Zanov had to resort to virtual instruments emulations of the originals used in the late ’70’, early ’80’s.

With a new workflow established, the next logical project was a brand new album recorded from scratch: enter “Open Worlds”.
The outcome was completed over a few months in the studio set up around Arturia’s Origin hardware digital sound processor loaded with emulations of classic analog instruments and an Access Virus TI virtual analog synth, all feeding into the Pro Tools virtual production environment.

The album’s framework consisting of mental sketches (or “worlds”) started morphing into sounds and then rough mixes. Finer tweaks though were required to tame dominant sounds out of the mix. In addition, a novel approach exploiting the MIDI setup worked well by simply playing back the multi tracks and adjusting each sound from its hardware controller for optimum balance. As each track reflected a “sound world” they also eventually inspired the album title.

After having spinned the album several times, I personally like the tracks “Magical Area”, “Strange World” and “Signal from Diamond Desert” best beside my personal favorite “Remote Impact”. The latter sounds much lighter with its gentle pulsating/cyclic structures along less abstract and more composed character. I for one would like too see Zanov continue in that direction.

Website: www.zanov.net

You can see what reviews I have done of this artist on the Zanov artist page