Kids, have an awesome Halloween! If there’s something good about this year’s financial chaos is that it’s a great opportunity to get creative, so kids, please make your own costumes and don’t ever stop listening to music. Benjamín Zárate aka Volumina (and member of Antoine Reverb) has released his latest EP titled Ciencia Ficción. It might just be your score for tomorrow’s stormy magical night. It’s only been few hours since we got this but it’s easy to process them when there’s a bunch of your nephews and nieces around you asking you for costume suggestions and candy already. (What they don’t know is that I never went trick-or-treating, oh poor me).
Pay close attention to “Ciencia Ficción I” which I found freaking scary; it sets up a cold mood and those Church-like bells scare the hell out of me. “Friendly Ghouls” is very mechanical and so chop-chop that I had to skip it (I get scared very easily). Volumina has plenty of fun with this, especially because almost all six tracks are set in hide-and-seek conditions. This isn’t just his interpretation of Halloween; it’s also a sonic galore to El Dia de los Muertos. You’ll find samples from Astor Piazolla as well as Los Cinco Latinos, also, an appearance by the king of pop. That’s right, the now gone Michael Jackson is evoked in the danceable thriller-inspired Billie Jean sampled “Vampire Gang.”
Ciencia Ficcion would work great as the soundtrack for a movie; it’s emotionally distressing in its mysterious and playful tones. The first layer (and base) of “Las Ultimas Horas” is the clicking sound of a watch, over it, a waving synth letting itself fly with the wind. This clicking and the outcome of it (like waking up every morning to an alarm clock) is ultimately the album’s most shivering moment. “Ciencia Ficcion II” steps in Burton territory, you know, the tavern sound of the The Bride’s Corpse. This track also works as a negotiation of both celebrations, juxtaposing Hollywood’s mirroring of Halloween with El Dia De Los Muertos and church.