OCCAMS LASER – The Grid Collection

Review by Mike Templar

British dark synth and synthwave producer Tom Stuart, also known as Occams Laser, has a remarkable collection of work to his name, with a career that stretches back to 2014. Occams Laser's sound is a mix of retro synthesizers and 80s horror soundtracks, with the added influence of cyberpunk and modern electronic music.

I'd like to introduce you to his outstanding body of work, which I call The Grid Collection consisting of three albums that follow a thoughtful musical storyline influenced by the 1982 TRON movie.

The Grid (2016) - 17 Tracks

The Grid. A place where data and information is represented as a simulated reality. Each user has their own program and due to the users creating these programs they regard their users with deific status.

Under the influence of a new power-hungry artificial intelligence, the programs are being coerced into losing faith in the users. It would take a new type of program to alter this balance of power and re-take the grid for the good of the programs and their users. With the aid of a mysterious entity claiming to be a user who has been put into the system, perhaps there is hope.

All will be settled on….The Grid.

Return to the Grid (2020) - 24 Tracks

In 1989 the creator of The Grid disappears. Haunted by this mystery we are drawn to a familiar place, The Arcade. Soon we are pulled into a digital world, one which has become more advanced than we could have ever imagined. This cyber frontier is filled with unknown dangers that must be fought to survive. With corrupted creations and unique beings born inside this digital world; it is hard to decipher friend from foe.  It seems we will need every scrap of help to traverse this cyber universe, find the creator of The Grid and escape alive.

“This album acts as a direct continuation to my album The Grid from 2016, however it also acts as a spiritual replacement soundtrack to TRON Legacy. In my head this is what I would have done with the soundtrack to the second film in the Tron series. Taking inspiration from elements and instruments used in the original TRON (1982) score but with a few modern techniques, styles, effects and my own spin on implementation,” Tom shares.

The Grid Lives (2023) - 19 Tracks

ENCOM has recovered data from what remains of Kevin Flynn’s reformatted data disc.

Using an older backup of the ENCOM mainframe computer system a new amalgamation has been formed. This creation is under the supervision of Edward Dillinger Jr.

However; buried deep in the backup code is something long forgotten. A program that left unchecked could repeat the mistakes of the past. Pursuit of the perfect system has always been a curse. It is not always certain what we remove from the equation to achieve such perfection. One thing is for certain…

The Grid Lives!

When you listen to The Grid Collection, you quickly realize that these soundtracks are not simply some sort of copies of the existing TRON soundtracks, but these sounds have a character all their own, just like the self-designed short stories to the albums as well.

Occams Laser created his own vision of an alternative TRON soundtrack, telling different parallel stories. His cinematic synthscape soundtracks shine with ingenuity and create a mood as if you were directly participating in the action of the stories. I really like the fact that he maintains a retro style with the analog synthsizer sounds that are more reminiscent of John Carpenter and the Blade Runner soundtrack than, for example, the modernized cyberpunk style of Daft Punk. Listening to these albums becomes a real pleasure.

The span of all tracks range from spherical-etheric songs to danceable cyberpunk tracks. With all 3 albums you get more than enough for the little money that is offered to you for 60 tracks! All albums come with attractive album artwork and additional material; The Grid Lives includes an alternate TRON short story.

I asked Tom what his motivation was to write his own mini-screenplay for the third part of his trilogy: “I love both current TRON films, and to me I just wanted to create my own 3rd part of that world before the possibility of it being ruined with TRON: Ares which is due to come out possibly next year!“

Check out Tom's outstanding artwork!

For more Occams Laser, visit occamslaser.bandcamp.com/music.