Synthetic Villains: Cosmic – Album Review

Synthetic Villains: Cosmic

(Flood Of Sound)

DL

Released: 31 March 2025

Synthetic Villains take you on a journey through time and space, creating a soundtrack of classic SF tropes.

For the next 30 minutes do not adjust your hi-fi, but prepare for a journey from the known into the unknown, as Synthetic Villains take you on a trip through the wonders and perils of time and space.  Be astonished as the Alma observatory picks out alien worlds and species, wonder at the space debris floating in the vacuum of space and flee in horror from the lunar insects of the underworld! Prepare your senses! Engage hyperdrive and set your laser beams to stun! Blast off into the realm of science fiction crashing against science fact.

Cosmic is Synthetic Villains latest offering and delves into the world of Science Fiction which predominated media in the 60s and 70s. transfixing kids with the dream of travelling through the universe and encountering alien lifeforms both friendly and deadly. As Richard Turner, the man behind Synthetic Villains, explains: “I was born in 1976. When I grew up, sci-fi and space was EVERYWHERE. Star Wars, Star Trek, the Black Hole, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Dr. Who, Lost in Space, E.T and various Gerry Anderson. Most of these programmes were accompanied by electronic sonic backdrops of some kind.” And it was often the music and sound effects that gripped the young Turner, “I heard various Radiophonic Workshop sound design, and other early electronic music that was abstract and lent itself to eerie, unsettling, or futuristic atmospheres, such as Morton Subotnik’s ‘Silver Apples of the Moon’. (And) as a teenage psychedelic rock fan, the spacey travails of the Rolling Stones’ “2000 Light Years From Home”, Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” and the unearthly explorations of Hawkwind kept me stargazing.”

Cosmos is a homage to that more innocent age, where we could dream about advancing into the stars, and very few imagined that in the 21st century a right wing tycoon, backed by a febrile President, would be the only person pushing back the frontiers of human colonisation. Or maybe they did…

Cosmos plays like a soundtrack, or a radio play, and is best listened to in one sitting to appreciate it fully. Whilst there are hints of classic soundtracks, such as the Blade Runner tinged Something Like The Sun, with its melancholic poignant chords and descending notes, and Celestial Frequencies with overlapping chords building up into intensity, it is its own beast, creating a miasma of sounds and music that take you into a world that sounds both futuristic and nostalgic.

I Spy With Alma’s Giant Eye (presumably referring to the ALMA observatory in Chile) turns our gaze onto alien worlds with ominous drums and harps, whilst Staring Into Space makes us feel the wonder and the enormity of the galaxies around us, as the ominous gothic organ and chanting create a celestial chorus. Likewise, there is the beauty and emptiness of space evoked in Zodiacal Clouds and Solar Storms. Whilst within this space there are weird scenes inside the vacuum on Space Wreckage and the music of the spheres are evoked on Variations in the Magnetosphere.

On Robot Rover On Another World, we get quirky, juddery music as the robot makes its way over another world, like a crazy junkyard vehicle. But beware! Silly Humanoids gives us alien sounds and the breathing of…something nasty…whilst the crazed brass band sound of Explorations in the Lunar Underworld evokes the Selenites of The First Men In The Moon.

There are a couple of tracks with classic SF lines: Circuits Don’t Fail Me Now, which sounds like a Space Invader game, and Are You Sure It’s Safe Out There?, which of course we know it isn’t, and the alien sounds and creaking and creeping vegetation noises make it clear it’s a jungle out there, and one unseen by human eyes!

I remember standing in the queue at the Palace cinema in my hometown to see Star Wars with thrilling excitement. Sadly, these days we don’t so much as stare up the stars but down at the moon in the gutter. If you want to relive those more optimistic and innocent times then this is the perfect soundtrack.

Start the countdown and blast off!

Cosmic by Synthetic Villains

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You can find Synthetic Villains on Bandcamp.

All words by Mark Ray. More writing by Mark Ray can be found at his author archive. And he can be found on Instagram.