(Expansion Team)
<img src="https://www.thestranger.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/03/rec_star.gif" width="10" height="10" alt=
"recommended" border="0" /<img src="https://www.thestranger.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/03/rec_star.gif" width="10" height="10" alt=
"recommended" border="0" /
In a recent issue, Blender awarded its monthly “we didn’t
even bother opening the shrink-wrap” pictorial nod to this album’s
Boris Vallejo–painted cover art, like that of a purple-penned
romance epic. Too bad—surely the most archmainstream of music
magazines would find its heart warmed by a foldout inside cover
replicating the color scheme and lettering of Michael Jackson’s
Thriller.
Better, though, to enjoy the album for what it is: space disco so
rococo it rivals Daft Punk’s Discovery for pure shamelessness.
We’re talking beautifully mic’d live drums on top of round-toned
programmed ones, laser-line synth playing over concentric-circular
synth programming, all of it both coy and assured, twee and muscular.
“Out of Phase” features a misleading title: Every one of its seven
minutes is locked in confident step. Giorgio Moroder and Tangerine
Dream are constant referents here, and unlike many of his fellow
cosmic-disco revivalists, Moulton convinces us he’s as overheated as
Eurodisco predecessors like Cerrone. (Hence the cover art.) He believes
in the groove so much he mixes it up in his head with the Pink Floyd
epics he also grew up on, and turns Exodus into a dream matchup:
every song linked, instrumental touches bombastic (dig the preening
drum fills on “Flaming Swords”), mood pensive, the whole thing both
tongue-in-cheek and not tongue-in-cheek at all.
But good cheese sharpens with age. Moulton’s taste for Vangelis can
strain your attention, and sometimes the arpeggiated synth lines can
suggest a cosmos that isn’t as vast or endless as it might first
appear. But the guy has audacity for damn sure, and much of
Exodus flaunts it with style. If ever a dance record deserved
its own Laserium show, this is it.