Style: Synthwave
Primary Emotions/Themes: An epic collection of songs that span the entire synthwave genre
Thoughts: If I had to show someone one album to explain what the synthwave genre is all about, it's probably MAVS' Wilderness. This is a sprawling epic of twenty tracks ranging from near ambient, to darksynth, to outrun, to straight up eighties nostalgia worship. It has almost everything that the genre has to offer.
Starting with Polyhymnal the band gives us the listeners a strong idea of what an ambient album would sound like through a synthwave lens. This transitions seamlessly into Last Embrace which embraces the synthwave deep driving beat and melodies that sound like they are straight out of dystopian movie watched on VHS. This then is immediately followed by Turing / Sequence which has an air of mystery about it that is slowly peeled away as the song progresses.
The thing that continues to amaze me about Wilderness is how diverse it is, yet how consistent it is. All of these songs clearly belong together, and not a single one of them makes me want to skip it. It is a long album, but having it on vinyl makes it easier to digest. I can listen to disk one or two without any issues, and if I'm really feeling it I'll put both on for a ride that will last me a while.
MAVS have a huge discography that is all over the place. Some is higher in quality than others, but with Wilderness they showed us what they can truly do: a clinic in the synthwave genre.
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