ProStudioMasters.com

Recent years have revealed a rapidly shifting reality as time seems to move at an ever-increasing speed. Our daily lives, access to information, and ability to process art have hastened in innumerable ways. Accelerated is Fotocrime’s response and reaction to living in this moment. Fotocrime’s fourth album and their first for new label home, Artoffact Records, Accelerated finds the band leaping forward from their signature darkwave-leaning post-punk into new territory. The album includes electronic rock anthems (“Accelerated”, “Match Factory Girl”), soulful sophisti-pop (“I Still Need You Here”), minimal synth punk (“Pulsar 99”), hints of Italo Disco (“Servant Of Your Soul”), and dreamy art rock (“Night Must Fall”). Backed by a small army of vintage drum machines, Fotocrime’s instrumentation on the album includes 12-string guitars, bass VI, saxophone, accordion, marimba, piano, and an array of classic analog synthesizers (no software synths were used on this or any Fotocrime recording). Fotocrime is led by founding member Ryan Patterson, the band’s singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. On Accelerated, Patterson’s songwriting has progressed dramatically and his rich baritone voice is front and center, taking the listener through the album’s themes of yearning, love, loss, and redemption. Patterson’s lyrics address the regret and grief of a family member lost to a drug overdose, the impassioned ache for the comfort of love, and the existential weight of the finite nature of life. Accelerated also includes lyrical narratives tackling concepts of class warfare, dreams of escaping into space, and buried secrets from the folly of youth.