Eight years on from their fascinating debut album, ARCADEA are back and wearing their dancing shoes. We should expect nothing less from this collaboration between MASTODON‘s Brann Dailor and his guitarist foil Core Atoms: liberated souls with a shared love of progressive rock, and an admirable dedication to the adventurous use of modular synthesizers. As Dailor has stated, the first ARCADEA album was pitched deep into prog territory, and while the project’s glittering and gregarious synth rock was by no means bereft of grooves, there were many moments that felt closely linked to MASTODON‘s legendary bluster. The essence of their sound remains the same on “The Exodus of Gravity”, but this is a much more uplifting and euphoric piece of work. Held together by a somewhat hazy sci-fi concept, these songs are plainly designed to get people’s feet moving.

The first thing that registers is how ARCADEA remain one of the most original bands in all of heavy music. Entirely free of guitars and driven by luminescent walls of synths and Dailor‘s peerless drumming, everything from the high-energy jolt of opener “Dark Star” to the closing cataclysm of “Planet Pounder” sits outside of contemporary cliché. There are obvious connections with the great synth-driven bands of the 1970s, from EMERSON LAKE & PALMER to CYBOTRON, and the influence of prog legends like GENESIS and YES is easy to detect. But at its heart, “The Exodus of Gravity” is a wildly colorful explosion of extremely danceable future rock, with Dailor‘s increasingly impressive vocals coasting across the electronics to disarming effect.

At times, ARCADEA are so aggressively accessible that they sound as spellbound by quirky, left-field pop as they do by anything more overtly progressive. But within the gorgeously peculiar likes of “Fuzzy Planet” and “Lake of Rust” it is the amalgamation of the two that makes the difference, and the deeply funky outcome plays out on the cosmic dancefloors of our wildest dreams.

Highlights are many: the stuttering, lissome space prog of “Gilded Eye”; the goofy, riff-heavy menace of “Galactic Lighthouse”; the ecstatic, astral shuffle of “The Hand That Holds the Milky Way”, but taken in its vibrant entirety, “The Exodus of Gravity” feels more like an extended song cycle with a sparkling and eccentric narrative core, very much in keeping with the classic prog albums that first inspired ARCADEA‘s existence. Approximately twice as fun as its predecessor, this band’s second voyage into outer space is also more focused. Dailor‘s vocals and drums are as gloriously distinctive as ever, and Core Atoms‘ synth-scapes are uniformly thrilling. The rapid clatter of “Starry Messenger” says it all; it’s the sound of utopian joy, welded to some of the most infectious and adrenalin-fueled music imaginable, with blissfully indulgent keyboard solos that bridge the gap between ancient and modern, and a constant, driving momentum that few more traditional rock bands could muster. Most importantly, “The Exodus of Gravity” turns a seemingly one-off project into something much more substantial and significant. If ARCADEA are here to stay, then their next move promises to be spectacular.