Travelogue by Jonny Fallout

Jonny Fallout returns with a truly fantastic selection of dance bangers that ooze professionalism and creativity throughout. Be prepared to be transported sensorily to a time where nothing mattered but you and the beat, and all was right with the world. Utter perfection!

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INTERVIEW
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George Ernst (Triplicate Records): What's the single most important thing music can do, as you see it?

Jonathan Follett (Jonny Fallout): Music is a universal language, which is why I enjoy it so much: from electronica to classical to jazz to rock. It's a way of expressing pure emotion and our fundamental spirit as human beings. So, the way I see it, music gives us the opportunity to create community, bring people together and have a lot of fun while doing it. I think, given the state of our politics and all the upheaval at the moment, especially in the US, this is more important now than ever.

GE: What's your favourite game in the Fallout series? And if you haven't played them, Who's your favourite person called Johnny? You're not allowed to say yourself.

JF: I haven't played the Fallout series. Although, perhaps I should, as I enjoyed the TV show immensely. So, I'll have to answer the second question. My favorite person called Johnny, has to be Johnny Cash, followed closely by Johnny Mathis. There are so many musicians named Johnny, it's really hard to chose.

GE: Can you talk a bit about the setup you utilised to craft such a clean and classic sound throughout the record?

JF: For this album, I spent a lot of time on sound design, especially for the drum and synth parts. For most of the sounds, I started with a most basic iteration, crafting each sound, first by selecting which waveforms and modulators I wanted to use and then building them up through a variety of effects. I was particularly interested in adding warmth and harmonic dimension through saturation and distortion. For example, an electronic hi-hat sound, or click or ping that you're using as a hi-hat, can sound vastly different depending on what aspect of the sound you emphasize and build on. I also spent a lot of time experimenting with EQ and compression, more than on previous albums, to get each of sonic pieces to fit the way I wanted them to.

GE: What's the prettiest thing in space?

JF: I think the photos of the Milky Way Galaxy from NASA are incredibly beautiful.

GE: Can you talk about your favourite track on the album? 'Isn't Love Important' is mine. I love how much beauty and wonder you manage to inject into these dance numbers.

JF: "Isn't Love Important" is my favorite as well. The warped synth melody and arpeggios exemplify the sonic experimentation that I did while creating the album. I think that for this track in particular all the different pieces came together well as a complete song. I don't think that happens all the time. I also really like how the vocal sample reflects the emotional build to the piece.

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REVIEW
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Jonny Fallout returns with yet another stellar selection of spacey-bangers entitled: 'Travelogue'. Let's not waste time here. You know him, you love him, you're well aware we feel the same given how much we release his wonderful music! Let's examine!

'Music Can Do All These Things' It can make you feel things in your body that words can't! Not my words, Jonny's! Or rather whomever is being sampled Orb-style on this opening masterpiece. I'll sign off on the sentiment though! Particular with regards to this airy, infectious opening number! A lovely way to kick things off and get back into the fallout groove. The groovy cosmic kind, not the mushroom cloud one.

'Hello Goodbye' takes the vocal sample-heavy vibe of the opener and runs with it. Vocoders the everloving heck out of it too! Suddenly you're transported to a 90's medium intensity-to-chill style rave. The classic dance sensibilities on here recall the work of many a house and electronica household name from this period, whilst maintaining a freshness that propels the listener onward. Onward into the equally mid-intensity infectious techno piece 'Oxygen Mask', wherein an under-the-surface bubbling of unease, aided by the subject matter is lost to the dizzying sway of that dance beat. This is when it starts to become truly apparent that Jonny has crafted an album of wall to wall bangers

'Travelogue' starts with what you need after a solid 7 or 8 minutes of dancing: a much deserved breather. Into the chill-out room we go as the BPM drops, the synths get all airy and slick, and the vibe goes icy and transcendent. For a time, that is. We're soon happily pulled back into the crunchy breakbeat fray with a dance-standard percussion line and scattered, colourful arpeggios. Over the course of this lengthy dosage of sweetness, the style remains consistent. Impressively so, given the length. Focus is never lost in the quieter moments or the more exploratory excursions in the second half. A banger through and through, and a clear highlight.

Things again take a chill-pill on 'From East to West'. New York to LA? Japan to London? Pluto to the Sun? What do you mean the cosmos doesn't work like that? Anyway, this one's good. If you listened to the last four tunes you could probably already predict that. It's low-key and with a delightfully crunchy lo-fi beat, coupled with shiny utopian synth keys. 'Isn't Love Important' on the other hand... alright, here we go. This is my personal favourite. It's not as though nothing else compares. On a mix of tracks as solid as 'Travelogue', the competition is fierce, but somehow the dreamy synths and airy, warped pads, underpinned by the scattered and kaleidoscopic arpeggios coalesce beautifully into a track that truly does not have a single wasted or imperfect second. It's everything you love from this producer, turned up to 11. This one is for the cream of the crop playlist.

Rolling away into the third act, We have our one and only true through and through chill-out number, 'Faraway Dreams of Other Worlds'. Finally Jonny chooses a tune to stay mellow and calm, it's your second breather, and the one you really need. Lunch break at school as opposed to the little one after the second period. It's also a banger to boot, as are the mind-bending space whirls of the following number, 'Stargazer': Colourful and hypnotic in the vein of the second half of 'Travelogue', but with a decidedly less intense vibe, though no less enjoyable to listen to. You can tell things are winding down, but Jonny's still having fun doing it. It's later into the night and people still want to dance, their bodies are just crying out for a pizza or something.

And so, we are segway'd into the closer. The long journey home. Or maybe it just feels long because you're stopping to smell the musical flowers. Or if we're piggybacking on Jonny's space-sensibilities, to gaze at the nebulas. Thin metaphors aside, what a fantastic closer to a fantastic album. All the tricks in JF's arsenal come to the forefront on this immaculate and cosmic closer. The funky stringy synthwork, the hypnosis-inducing classic dance percussion, and the four-dimensional instrumentation and mixing.

Jonny's done it again. You knew he had it in him, and it's abundantly clear this burning comet of creativity isn't burning out anytime soon.

Jonny Fallout is an electronic artist / producer of synthwave, retrowave and synthpop with cyberpunk flavor. When he's not abusing the upper limits of his machine's RAM, he's obsessively sampling cool noises, constructing new sounds, or remixing tracks.

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