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Increasingly prolific to the point where one wonders whether he might want to go easy on the energy drinks, Steve Moore has been flying the flag for synth-driven soundtrack music for well over a decade now, both as a solo artist and with the reliably extraordinary Zombi. As with 2016’s The Mind’s Eye, Mayhem works both as a paean to all the electronic horror and sci-fi soundtracks of the 70s and 80s and as a genuinely unsettling and bewildering collage of sound and melody in its own right. Such is the nature of these things that most pieces end long before the three-minute mark, and so the one downside here is that some of Moore’s best musical ideas are only briefly explored. That said, a strong majority of these slender vignettes are still gripping, evocative and sonically rich. From opener Welcome To TSC’s textbook tense electropulse and the woozy drones of We Are Brave to The Bull’s sinister ululations and the epic video game clatter of Bullets Are For Cowards, an atmosphere of brooding disquiet prevails, which is presumably just the thing the movie’s director was hoping for. It surely won’t be long before Moore is knee-deep in Hollywood madness. Good for him.
