Electron Odyssey - Your Future Awaits
Review by Thorisson
After a 20-year stint in the video game industry, Electron Odyssey took the leap into the music industry last August with Your Future Awaits; a delightfully versatile album that hits in all the right ways. It is a journey, to say the least. One minute you’re jamming out to a funky, vocoder-heavy tune, and the next you find yourself immersed in a soothing, atmospheric masterpiece.
The album transitions between genres and influences in a genius way and, despite the tracks’ differences, Your Future Awaits maintains its coherence perfectly throughout. Outrun, synthpop, progressive rock, video game inspired soundtracks—these are just some of the many genres experienced in the span of 47 minutes. And each track is perfect for the role it plays. To round off an excellent listening journey, the album is topped off with vocal cameos from Drew Tyler and Megan McDuffee.
As a debut album, Your Future Awaits is nothing of spectacular. And yes, the its beautiful cover art is created by none other than Electron Odyssey himself!
About Electric Odyssey
Electron Odyssey—or Jeff Spoonhower—is an independent musician and producer living in northern Indiana. Inspired by ‘80s synth-driven pop, progressive rock, synthwave, and cinematic scores, Electron Odyssey is known to combine a variety of hardware synthesizers and software-based virtual instruments to create the perfect blend of music that feels both nostalgic and new.
Jeff has spent the past 20 years as a professional sound designer, art director, and animator working in the video game industry on critically-acclaimed titles in the Bioshock, Uncharted, Borderlands, Saints Row series, and more. Jeff co-founded the independent game studio, Resonator Interactive, and is art director on the award-winning indie game, Anew: The Distant Light. Jeff also teaches computer animation, sound design, and animation history as a professor at the University of Notre Dame.
His love of electronic music began when he was a child, in the early ‘80s, as he eagerly devoured his father's vinyl collection. Artists like Rush, Genesis, Yes, Don Ellis, and Wendy Carlos opened up his mind to the endlessly beautiful sonic possibilities created by synthesized music. A photo of Geddy Lee in a music magazine playing an OB-Xa synthesizer tipped him off to the source of these magical sounds.