Artist: Mood Of Departure
Title: Roadmap
Label: Ornaments
Cat: ORNAMENTS050
Format: Vinyl, digital
Release Date: November 11th 2020 (vinyl), November 23rd 2020 (digital)
Tracklist:
A1. Scan
A2. Protective Wings
A3. Nightmare Girls
A4. Desert Dreams
A5. Templefield Midnightskate
A6. Life Transpose
B1. Stoned Bones
B2. Blueprinter
B3. Dollars
B4. Another Reminder
B5. Footsteps
B6. Until The End Of The World

Buy link: https://ornaments-label.bandcamp.com/album/roadmap-lp

The 50th release on Ornaments totally undermines the connection with the label’s EP collection, because it features a kind of sound really atypic for the German imprint, as we have been used to know it for the particolar blend of house, techno with its derivates (mainly tech house and dub techno) proposed during the years.
The identity behind this music project is unknown: Mood Of Departure debuts with this 16 track album titled ‘Roadmap’. The ambiguity of the whole sound is enriched with an enigmatic cover art, that’s another unusual thing because Ornaments puts out all its vinyl releases with a trasparent colored wax and a white paper inner sleeve, without a dedicate cover (except a few cases) and without any words on it or in the labels (you can only understand what record is by reading the matrix runout).
But getting back to the album, no one of the tracks is dancefloor oriented, every song reveals an abstract character involved in researching various electronic music faces, each one has got a short duration where in a few minutes the essence of the production is thickened. The major influences noticeable in ‘Roadmap’ are ambient, synthwave and down tempo.
Probably the intent of the artist(s) is to offer a unique listening experience, trying to arouse emotions and to engage the listener in every moment; it could be difficult to reach this result with an album like this, since the music pressed is difficult and maybe not so catchy.
‘Roadmap’ breaks the schemes and the traditional music from Ornaments’ history, placing itself in a position appreciated or unpopular which allows an opening to new horizons and music scenarios.

More info:
https://soundcloud.com/ornaments-music
https://ornaments-label.bandcamp.com/

Review by Matteo Pitton