Thomas Ross Fitzsimons, long revered for sculpting emotional landscapes in film scores, now charts a collision course with the void on his brand-new endeavour: “The Planets Vol. 1.” The British-Australian maverick jettisons orchestral tradition entirely, embracing modular synthesis as his spacecraft. Guided by early astrologer Alan Leo’s cosmic archetypes – the same celestial blueprints that ignited Holst’s Planets suite a century prior – Fitzsimons transmutes starlight into voltage. Forget strings and brass; here, patch cables become constellations, oscillators pulse like neutron stars, and every knob twist charts a course through uncharted nebulas. This is celestial cartography for the ear, mapping planetary energies not as melodies, but as raw, living currents of electricity and instinct.
The EP is an intentional leap into the unknown – a deliberate shedding of cinematic formality for the wild frontiers of analog chaos. Fitzsimons cites pioneers like Reznor, Ross, and Sakamoto as his navigational stars, guiding him toward sound as process, not perfection. “The Planets Vol. 1” thrives on unpredictability: feedback loops mimic orbital decay, random voltage fluctuations become solar winds, and the very instability of the modular system embodies the universe’s beautiful indifference. It’s less a recorded album, more a captured event – a sonic supernova frozen mid-eruption.
Nowhere is this cosmic ferocity more visceral than in “Mars.” Leo defined the Red Planet as pure “energy, strength, and motion” – Fitzsimons weaponizes that definition. The track detonates like a coronal mass ejection: a relentless, war-drum pulse hammers beneath a tectonic tide of sub-bass, shaking your bones like gravitational waves. Synth layers grind and shear like colliding asteroid fields, while noise-laced swells surge with the terrifying pressure of a collapsing star. There’s no melody to cling to, only raw kinetic force – the brutal physics of celestial bodies accelerating toward impact. It’s the sound of creation’s forge: primal, unchained, and violently beautiful. “Mars” doesn’t play; it reigns, proving Fitzsimons hasn’t just made music – he’s channelled the furious heartbeat of the cosmos itself.
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