Exploring a strange ecosystem balanced with equal parts Tech-Noir and Adriatic light, Rainbow Arabia land on a new world with their second full-length album FM Sushi. Vaporous FM- synthesized melodies streak across the planet's neon sky, disintegrating into it's plush, hypnotic atmospheres. Two musical vectors simultaneously approach 1985 and 2025, intersecting briefly in the present. Their Weirding Modules are armed with sounds reminiscent of Orchestral Manouveres in the Dark, Tangerine Dream, Vince Clark, and Jan Hammer. Rainbow Arabia prepare for a war of wavelengths where amplitude and timbre arrive at a sunset-lit shore, emerging from a white Ferrari, armed to the teeth, and prepared for action of Miami Vice magnitude.
Tiffany’s mercurial pop vocals float into a cavernous section of the subconscious, draped with plush tapestries of sound. Her melodies linger like love letters, stowed but never forgotten, by ax weary traveler, revealing tales of all that has been, and all that will be. Like golden beams, these melodies draw the listener deeper into this increasingly familiar territory and the their ears adjust, like eyes to darkness, and it becomes clear the well from which these songs spring.
With the addition of Dylan Ryan (Icy Demons, Cursive, Herculaneum, Michael Columbia), they have another force contributing to the evolution of their sound. Ryan’s drive on tracks like “River’s Edge” and “Three Moons” posses a spellbinding motion where the listener is engaged by the rhythm; pushed, pulled, and pleased by cymbals, dropped into the mix like stones skipping over a still, mirror-like lake with treated delicate ambience. With its choir-like synths, analog sequencing and new age saxophone solos, FM Sushi is determined to set a crystalline path into a future filled with colors that mankind has named only in dream…
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Their new album FM Sushi, released on their own Time No Place imprint with some help from Cologne techno giant Kompakt, retains that feeling of youthful mischief but reinforces it with tuneful songs and deluxe production that seemed only a distant possibility on Boys. (7.0)
Not that Rainbow Arabia are alone in those qualities—there are plenty of cute but ineffectual synth acts operating in similar territory. What sets them apart is their songcraft and their gift for arrangement. It is exquisite. (4 out of 5 stars)
it becomes clear that Rainbow Arabia have come on leaps and bounds from their debut, releasing an evocative, vivid album beyond the expectations of most. (4 out of 5 stars)
FM Sushi is a) chock-full of FM-synths and b) like sushi, definitely not for everyone. It is however, brilliant. The mix of 1980s synth lines and futuretro themes result in a record that could be the sci-fi equivalent of the Drive soundtrack
close to the damaged Downtown LA of Drive. The album has a cinematic hazy nighttime feel to it. Check out the skittering percussion, Europop-synths, and soft focus vocals on “Lacking Risk.” This is fever-dreamy stuff.
Through their wonderfully varied and divergent tastes in progressive electronic music, film scores and the post-countercultural legacy of 70s Americana, Rainbow Arabia’s sound has grown to be a supremely stylish and robust affair
‘F.M. Sushi’ has a more defined ’80s synth sensibility than its predecessor, replacing the ethno-touristic elements with songs full of clean, crisp and bubbly synths and drum machines referencing classic Italo, UK synth pop and minimal wave.