Zobol – Retrofuturism EP

What is retrofuturism, and why is it so important to electro artists? Perhaps it has something to do with the imposition of the past onto the future and vice versa, with the aim of producing an implicit social commentary: either suggesting that certain given visions of the future are retrograde, or that our view of the past is shaped by what we imagine the future will be like. Whatever the case, producer Zobol aims to demonstrate, not tell, their answer to the question, with four neat new electro ones. All coming in the form of functional, floor-ready cascady flappers and snappers, Zobol’s choice of titles for the remainders – ‘Hyperfocus’, ‘Inter-City Travel’, ‘Fight Or Flight’ and ‘Dread’ – seem to get at both the technological joys and biopsychic anxieties of the oncoming future, and/or over-fixating on it for want of the present. ‘Fight Or Flight’ is particularly impressive with its fabric-tearing transitional sounds and candid, apocalyptically sweeping Reeses, which do indeed activate the parasympathetic nervous system.