James Ferraro - Four Pieces For Mirai FLAC download

Solid piece of soundtrack work by James. The mashing of modern classical music and synthetics is a hard thing to pull off, but this EP manages to effortlessly.

Being a fan of "old-school" New Age Tapes/ Muscleworks Inc.-era Ferraro, as well as Far Side Virtual, I've definitely been very happy with Human Story 3 and this work as a return to form. That being said Mirai might be the best thing in his "hi-fi" era if not the best thing he's ever done. His conceptual execution here seems to have more clarity than ever. That could be said of Human Story 3 too but this EP has much more electronic production trickery and pure ear candy that appeals to my tastes on a base level. I could write essays about what the concept appears to be but most people who do that just end up sounding like bad, pretentious mimics of James' genius twitter feed so I'll let him speak for himself. I don't like comparing Ferraro to much ever but honestly this is kind of the aesthetic that I hoped Oneohtrix Point Never's Age Of was going to be (but that fell very, very, very short of expectations). It should be obvious from the amazing EP trailer video he made. We are living in the digital dark ages. The cybernetic dystopia he hinted at through the retrofuturistic lens of earlier hypnogogic-era works (Citrac, KFC City 3099, the K2 albums) has become a reality. This fully exposes the dystopian underside, or aftermath, of the utopian simulations seen on Far Side Virtual and Human Story 3, yet there is a thin glimmer of hope and escape (however with the sneaking feeling that even that may be a simulation). These aesthetics and concepts are explored with some of the most emotive and coherent, yet unabashedly abstract and disjointed, instrumental/acoustic work he's released yet. Should be another hint that those who dropped off with or after Far Side Virtual should tune back in at this point.

amazing review dude. this put my thoughts about the album into words perfectly

Brilliant piece of work until Gulf Gutters. Conceptual/intentional in its bad taste? Maybe. Good? No. The whisper faux-scream circa 2005 MySpace digi-grind mixed with the autotuned vocals is absolutely terrible and does nothin’ good for me personally. Everything else is top notch modern Ferraro. Interested to see how the entire work of albums plays out.