Scooter Chronicles

Zero One - “Ozone”

Tracks:

1. Malfunction
2. Nano
3. Affirmative
4. Twilight
5. Flashback
6. Glitch
7. Dreams
8. Lifeforce
9. Brainwave
10. Future
11. OK

About a year ago I bought a couple of electronica albums and as Amazon always does, it starts giving you recommendations of other material that you might like based on your purchases or rankings. Zero One came up. “Ozone” is the fourth album by the project, and was the last one I purchased. It is also the best.

Kevin Dooley

Zero One consists of Kevin Dooley and his music. I don’t know much about him, due to electronic music not being on the forefront of the media’s attention. However I did find out that Dooley was originally a saxophonist playing in swing bands, but then was introduced to the work of Kraftwerk, Alan Parsons and Tangerine Dream in the late 70’s. He eventually followed their lead to synthesizers and electronica.

Even though I like this album more then the previous three, Zero One is very consistent. Not that it doesn’t stray very far, on the contrary. “Flashabck” has a very bluesy and jazzy sound to it, almost like what electronica blues would sound like. (Considering Dooley’s past, it may be very appropriately titled.) But there is usually something about every song that stands out. There aren’t any tracks that I may skip from time to time. It’s all good.

Another aspect that I like about the songs is their structure and sounds. I don’t want to sound in any way that I could easily do what Dooley does, but a lot of his songs could have been constructed by me. I have used a software called Acid in the past (and hope to use again sometime soon) where you can take loops of sounds and construct them into a song, or quite anything else you have in mind. The things I have done in the past are similar to a few of the songs on this album. Especially “Nano” and “Glitch”. I find it very amazing that I never heard any of Zero One’s music before constructing the songs that I did.

Zero One’s greatest asset is probably the wide range of sounds. Sure, it could be labeled as generic, but it crosses over very well. It seems that anybody that likes a specific type of electronica more then another would still find much to like about this album. It has a great range about it.