Ambient music's favorite Rock 'n Roll Hall of Famer Alessandro Cortini returns with his highest profile solo album to date. "Scuro Chiaro" is a frazzled selection of 8-bit RPG riffs, tape-dubbed arpeggios, sandblasted rhythms and saturated power ambience. A finely matured cask blend of early OPN, Tim Hecker, Emeralds and Prurient.

The faint throb of industrial electro underpins Cortini's umpteenth solo record. His obsession with synthesizers has characterized his last run, from the minimalist loveletter to Roland's underrated MC-202 "Sonno" to "Avanti", which was written on the EMS Synthi AKS MKII. On "Scuro Chiaro", particular synths are no longer the focus, but Cortini's keen focus on texture and minimalism is still central.

Each track appears to be built from the simplest ingredients, maybe a single melancholy arpeggio or bare drum pulse, but swells slowly to reflect the timbre and shifting tone of the instrument. Cortini treats his electronic boxes as if they were built of lacquered wood and horse hair, and betrays a passion for an era when the serendipity and unpredictability of the analog realm was far more constant.

The tracks are rooted in the eerie genre sound universe of John Carpenter, and tempered by Cortini's well-documented interest in vintage videogames. The repetitive, loping melodies are directly linked to a long-gone era of Commodore Amiga shovelware, filtered thru the composer's knowledge of noise, early synth music and Krautrock. The result is ambient, industrial and electropop all at once, fermented into almost beatless musical liqor: steeped in nostalgia, but expertly restrained.