Floex – Zorya

September 26, 2011 • Minority Records

Floex is Tomáš Dvořák, a musician I became very familiar with due to his incredible soundtrack for the game Machinarium, which was a masterpiece of modern electronic music. This album, released under his own name, is a bit more concrete and nu-jazz-oriented than the dreamy and ambient soundtrack material, but his signature style and fantastic songwriting is still all here, making one of the best electronic albums I've heard in a long time.

Zorya is not an easy album to describe; you have to hear some to really get what's going on. There's a highly unique mix of sounds presented here—most of the tracks have jittery, noisy IDM-style beats as the groundwork, but floating on top is a huge variety of instruments, ranging from piano to synths to chromatic percussion to live clarinet. Of course it's probably not the first time these sorts of arrangements have been put down, but I've never heard anything quite done the same way as here.

The amount of detail put into each track is incredible; sometimes it's hard to imagine this is the work of a single person. Most tracks strongly evoke various imagery for me, which I love. Take the entrancing 5/4 rhythm of "Casanova": the snappy drum groove draws you in, and then layers of clarinet and trumpet carry you along in a soaring, encompassing melodic collage, until you fly into the sun at the track's climax. Each song does that, more or less; I just want to sit and listen, entranced, forgetting that I'm supposed to be writing a review.

However I should say that the addition of vocals on a couple of tracks is an odd choice, one that I don't really think fits with Dvořák's style particularly well. They've grown on me a little bit, slowly, but I'm still not totally sold on them. For me, they distract from the music and just seem to get in the way (though those on "Nel Blu" work a bit better than "Precious Creature" as they're more ambient and integrated into the mix).

Regardless I still find this album fascinating, and a perfect followup to the Machinarium soundtrack—though Zorya is perhaps not quite as good as it, I'd highly encourage anybody who enjoyed one to seek out the other. And I can only hope Dvořák puts out anything nearly this good sometime soon.

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