Out-Of-Body Recs, run by one of the fellas in Terminator 2, sent in a couple of harder, murkier tapes last year, and that was fine, but A History of Arson, damn, it’s really something. I mean we’ve all been appreciating eMego and Mark McGuire and, personally, Rat Catching and Mudboy here at Cerbs, and Matthew Akers is firmly planted on the brighter, trippier end of that specific synth spectrum. Not only that, but he doesn’t disdain BEATS, which is a huge plus when you’ve got plenty of tape to fill. The rhythms retain a somewhat techno-ist bent, albeit with a busier bent, and they propel the already-interesting arrangements to new heights. They also help round out the concept behind this cassette: the thought process of an arsonist. This vision might not seem apropos for a synth artist, but you’d be surprised what Akers can pull off, from horror-soundtrack stylings to the floating synth sculptures referred to earlier to futuristic tek-naw. Particularly fascinating are the guilty synth sequences of “Bad Wolf,” which seem to encapsulate the arsonist’s first inklings of evil. Or at least that’s how I hear it; suss the rest yrself, or burn yr hands off trying.
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