Completely in abandon, Gem FM’s wonderfully wacky and weird leftfield electronic experimental project Sonic Boom really delivers in its promise. Combining elements of progressive rock with trance and electronica, Sonic Boom leaves you with a constant flurry of unique and changing electronic tracks that are loaded with a sense of spark and energy while simultaneously holding a rather mellow and hypnotic tension that keeps you confusingly zoned in. From the bouncy bops of SwagR, he moves you into a more suspicious and brooding tension on 4banger, a tune that’s decidedly more intriguing and loaded with so many tiny sonic elements that aren’t impossible to discern yet innately interesting enough to keep your attention glued.
The entire record feels like a world music experiment into the electronic realm, constantly fusing sounds that are both geographically and musically diverse into these weird but soothing synthetisations that maintain a riveting rhythm and flourishing melody from back to front. It’s definitely not down the middle whatsoever, potentially leaving the less experimental or curious listeners slightly bewildered or befuddled by what they’re hearing. But, somehow, the more and more you let yourself escape into this fantastical creation, every tiny minutia of the production starts to morph from something curious into something necessary or obvious.
A truly outlandish yet refreshingly powerful piece of leftfield electronica that completely threw away all my expectations and perceptions, Sonic Boom is not for a moment a dull record. Crazy and convoluted, perhaps, but immensely intriguing and constantly innovative undoubtedly.