Jonas Reinhardt - Mask of the Maker - Vinyl

Vintage synthesizer music has ballooned from a fringe interest into something approaching an outright renaissance across the past half-decade, but few wield as much radical mastery in the realm as Jonas Reinhardt. After a couple years experimenting with group arrangements, Jesse Reiner (Reinhardt's mastermind / alter ego) returned the project in 2011 to it's solitary roots, birthing the distant moon terrarium Music for the Tactile Dome, the Klaus Schulze-spawn the Prime Revealer, plus last year's Italo-kraut shredfest Foam Fangs. All of which, in retrospect, feel like mere promising precursors to his pumping, cosmos-slaloming electro-opus Mask of the Maker. Crafted bi-coastally (San Fran and Brooklyn) over the course of two years, and incorporating an eclectic web of multi-instrumentalist collaborators-including percussion genie Damon Palermo, Diego Gonzalez, Phil Manley (who also engineered some of the sessions), Tim Soete, Steve Moore, Clint Newsom, Michael Barron and Meryl Press-the record's nine compositions represent the loftiest heights of the Jonas Reinhardt Xperience, fusing deep kosmische moods with jet-propulsion lab experiments, classic galactic Italo, soaring starblood synth workouts, funky astral ragas, psychedelic dust clouds and rare mantric guest vocals.