f5point6 - In Retrospect

 Released: February 13 

While not bringing in much new material, this latest album from f5point6 signifies a bit of a milestone for him and the label he works with, See Blue Audio. Since 2020, f5point6 has had 11 releases including a collaborative album and 10 solo albums, which is rather impressive for a span of just six short years. To cap this off, a single track from each album was chosen for this compilation with a new track inserted at the end as a sort of teaser towards future projects. And while you may expect such a compilation to sounds slightly disjointed and hodgepodge, the flow throughout the album is actually quite smooth without any indication that these couldn’t all just be tracks of the same album. 

Everything has been beautifully remastered to fit together well and there’s just a wealth of wonderful ear candy, as you would expect from R. Cleveland Aaron in his f5point6 element. A few tracks stood out to me as they came from some of my favorite works of his including the floaty and sparse “The Shuttle Leaves at Midnight” from the album of the same name. It’s such spacey track in that everything feels so far apart with the lead synths floating around the top end and the low rumbling of bass that comes in later holding down the floor. There’s also the deep and tense “The Others” from Clinical Trials, which was by far the darkest sounding of all his works. And that dark tension comes through amazing for this track, especially as the vocal clips begin and the atmospheric sounds become heavier. 

Overall, it’s a fantastic marker of a musical project so far. If you are familiar with f5point6’s work, then you’ll obviously enjoy this. But if you are unfamiliar, then In Retrospect will provide a succinct introduction to what he’s done so far and provide a jumping off point to further exploration.