To say that Mortal Prophets is a sonic vehicle through which John Beckmann drives, explores, and even off-roads all over the musical map is an understatement. No sound or style, genre or era seems off limits to him. _ Lost in Space_, his latest seven-track collection, finds him racing down the boulevards of classic synth-pop, but of course revisiting those avenues and alleyways with his own signature sound.
This collaboration with Irish producer William Declan Lucey sits in a retro-futuristic place, where the familiarity of the past dances deftly with the sonic predictions of what’s to come, just as those original post-punk pioneers did back in the day. Only perhaps warmer, a heady blend of digital dexterity and the more human feel of an analog embrace.
“Taste of Honey” sets the tone, a blend of chiming guitar licks, brooding bass pulses, shimmering sonics, and dancefloor beats. There is a wonderful frisson to Beckmann’s vocals, an anticipation built into the delivery. “More Than Ever” has echoes of Don Henley’s classic “Boys of Summer,” but again, there is something in the vocals, an almost gothic-infused, shaded delivery that stands in opposition to the sweet music that carries it.
“This Kind of Love” ebbs and flows between the understated and a more beat-driven energy, and “Idle Summer” is a mystical, muted take on the synth ballad, feeling like a dream-pop song from another dimension, as if we are finally hearing the original signal from which others then took their cue.
Lost in Space is undoubtedly synth pop, and Beckmann is clearly a fan of those early pioneers – the John Foxx era Ultravox and perhaps Depeche Mode as they began to transition from teen popsters and start the journey to musical icons. But, like everything else he does, it isn’t about imitating; it is about lifting the torch and running with it, taking the story of that earlier sound into interesting and contemporary, adjacent and unusual territory.
But whatever it is, like all the music he makes, the world is a slightly changed and undeniably better place for this album, and in deed him, being in it.
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