Track of the Morning 21/12/09 – Access to Arasaka: Monoscan

For some reason, the snow always makes me think of the end of the world. Not the good kind of ‘Boom, Boom, Terminator’ apocalypse, just everything being over. On days like this, I just don’t want to listen to anything heavy or aggressive. It’s days like this that there’s a lot of ambient or IDM on the iPod, like today’s TOTM – Monoscan by Access to Arasaka.

Access to Arasaka are pretty new to the scene; after providing a few tracks for compilations for Tympanik and other high-level electronica labels and remixes for artists like Aphorism, they finally released their debut album ‘Oppidan’ late this year, and beginning to end it’s awesome. Not too ambient, not too aggressive, but this is definitely the more ‘cyber’ end of the IDM scene compared to the more organic, soundtrack-esque stylings of artists like Blackfilm.

The album could well be one long song considering the masterful way in which the tracks flow together, but Monoscan is definitely one of the standouts for me. There’s some more kick to the beat than much of the rest of the album and some manipulated samples of screams which somehow don’t sound creepy. The whole album just brings up images of an Aeon Flux type world and would be the perfect soundtrack to a sci fi game or film.

I’m definitely a fan of Access to Arasaka and can’t wait to see what they do next. Here’s the track in question. I can’t seem to find it on YouTube so it’s going to have to be a Last.fm link today. Sorry.

http://www.last.fm/music/Access+To+Arasaka/_/Monoscan