🅑🅐🅒🅚 🅣🅞 🅗🅞🅜🅔🅟🅐🅖🅔

Arwelone

'Cocktails and avenues'

best track: sparks

click album cover to listen

So, my first review is an easy one. alex Davidson is the brainchild behind arwelone and what he has achieved here is a remarkably intelligent offering that most artists don't achieve until they are years into their creation. it is quite rare for me to rate so many tracks on a single album so highly.

we are given a healthy 13-track album with great structure including a wonderful repetition instrumental for an intro called 'everlasting journey', that doesn't come across as repetitive. We then get blasted with 'ripples', a vaporwave-esque second track that blossoms in to a euphoric synthwave masterpiece.

the first 2 tracks leave you thinking that this album is an all-instrumental offering, but we are then blown away with the best track of the album. 'sparks' is a song that hits you in the feels. a slow-dance at any prom night would be perfectly complimented by this little number. track 4 goes by the same name as the album and could be straight out of a top gun remake.

strange symmetry is another personal favourite of mine and just as in the track 'sparks', we enjoy a vocal helping from 'high fantasy'. this guy's pipes really nail the 80's sound that we have become accustomed to with so many synthwave artists. the final track 'we are' is obviously supposed to be an outro, but to me it feels more like we are being put on-hold and told that this is an insight into the next album, which I have massive expectations for.

this album fully deserves a 9/10 from me, the top-end production was obviously high on Alex's mind when he made this. it would've been very easy to merely pump out a few tracks just to get some work out there on the internet, but 'arwelone' avoids the trap of creating a vision-less album. as a serial synthwave listener, i tend to pick single tracks from artists, probably because I'm lazy! but I have finally found an album that I could listen to from start to finish & for many years to come. fingers crossed this isn't the peak of his musical powers. I want more! and soon! joe ward