17/09/2025
ALISA CORAL'S {Mono Chrome} - Atomic Autumn : Kurchatov Records Album
Second album from Alisa's project, and to say it blew me away, would be an understatement. Although played using wholly familiar electronic and electric gear and fx, I can honestly say I've never heard anything like this before. Its musical scope is staggering and the fact that I'm now on my fifth play of the whole album, and am still hearing things I missed before, illustrates this. But what is it, I hear you cry – well, it's space-rock but not as you know it; it's electronic music from a Cosmic Jokers generation, but not as you know it; it's bass-heavy industrial in its atmospherics, but not as you know it. The production is infinite, the playing intricate and the overall effect is like being hit by a hammer in a velvet glove. All instruments are played by Alisa Coral with the exception of the drums on the three lengthy tracks, which are courtesy of the mysterious I.D.F. The album overall, will have a wide appeal from space-rock to cosmic music fans, chill-out to industrial.
Allow me to explain.........
The opener is the near 8 minute “Physics First (F-1)” and right from the start, there's this immense sounding 5-string bass guitar creating a rhythm that's a bit like Pink Floyd's “On Of The Days”, only this thing shakes the floorboards and rattles the windows, but is the core rhythm around which the track revolves. All around is a cavernous air of electronic intensity as Coral's vocal is a thing of wonder – intoning the lyrics in a Gilly Smyth-esque space-whisper, only more forceful, each line flies upwards and then back to earth, heavily echoed and the way it's done is completely and utterly spellbinding. Around 4 minutes in, with that bass still hammering out, and not a drum in sight, the freight train rhythms have added layers of synths and electronics added to them, injecting a melody at the heart of the machine, further emphasised when a lead synth line flies onwards and upwards, over the nuclear core underneath. Just shy of 7 minutes, the vocal returns, and this boiling sonic cauldron continues to delight, the air thick with musical textures and still that wicked bass guitar taking it through to a climactic finale.
And that's just track 1......
The comes the 18+ minutes of “Atomic Autumn 1: The Weapon” - opening with a sampled Russian voice, assorted layers of swirling, harmonic, cosmic and expansive electronics create a density out of which emerges a different but equally heavy bass guitar rhythm, as the synths gather strength and Coral's distant, echoed voice briefly enters, but fades as a huge array of melodic atmospheric synths and multi-textured guitar fill the air, this wickedly heavy river of bass thundering below, and by now the combination of all of this has created a sound-world that is not only immense but truly mind-blowing. The intensity continues as the layers of electronics continue to fly, swirl and drift, all set in seriously strong musical territory, as bass and synths take centre stage, apparently fading into the distance but all of a sudden, the space-whispers coalesce, the synth layers start to climb, the musical fog-bank spreads its wings, taking you into another section where the bass pounds slowly, the synth textures and assorted space swoops are flying all around the mix, a sampled voice is briefly featured and the whole thing has become this gigantic cosmic-industrial whirlpool of sonic perfection, as though someone put the Cosmic Jokers in a giant, space-rock blender. Continuously evolving, with sound patterns and textures coming and going, this amazing musical horizon stretches far out before you right to the end of the track, whereupon.....
…...the near 23 minute “Atomic Autumn II: The Powerplant” begins its journey.....on a solid rhythm of mid-paced, varied electronic and acoustic drum rhythms, the stark electronics slowly becoming more full-sounding and melodic, the sound of the factory starting up its day. Far from repetitive, the rhythms subtly change, but, amid a combination of synths and drones, suddenly Alisa's echoed vocal, enters and matches the pace of the rhythms, which is just genius, in that it's catchy as hell, gives a cosmic feel to the factory floor rhythms and is in the background just enough for you to be able to hear its effect rather than its actual lyrics, just to add to the magical and ever expanding world of sound that is being created. It's a kind of industrial-sized chill-out with power and purpose, but, like the album as a whole, nothing stays the same, everything progresses and there are musical wonders coming at you all the time. The bass has now been added, as a stretched-out textural guitar layer provides a melodic effect without actually being one and the journey continues. Set to the rhythmic backbone, the electronics drift, soar and drive, as the overall soundscape changes, the guitar flies, the Russian sampled voice returns, disappears, and then the rhythm changes, a huge array of synths replace the guitar and the journey progresses.
The final track is the 17+ minute “Kurchatov Records”. Here a throbbing hum, percussive rhythm and sampled voice kick things off before a river of synths, the undulating rhythms and then the industrial percussion, all weave in and out of the mix, with Coral's heavenly echoed, voice in the background. Slowly it all changes shape, texture and substance as the layers are built, albeit this time in a much more cosmic musical setting, still intense, but just more open-ended. Over the course of its running time, it becomes this giant-sized slice of spacey industrial chill-out that constantly travels and flows with a solid rhythmic foundation upon which all manner of synths, percussives, bass and guitar textures, interconnect like some vast intergalactic synths-driven symphony.
Overall, this is one amazing album – like I said, unlike anything you'll have heard before, but with many echoes from the past, pointing towards the future, so make this album a presence in your musical life – you won't regret it.
