Mlada Fronta - Outrun

The stars twinkle against a night sky as all that lays before you is an open road with nothing in between you and it for a hundred miles. Pure, black asphalt marked by the screeching tires of legends and outlaws that have been there before your time seeking escape from a wild and wicked system that twisted them into the monsters they have become. The lights of your 1970 Dodge Challenge pave the way for you to go. White knuckling the steering wheel, you shift into drive, slam your foot down on the gas, and floor across the beauty of the open American road and fly to freedom. As you listen and make your way through Mlada Fronta's Outrun, I believe this is how the legendary French producer wanted you to experience the album: as a full fledged adrenaline rush. 

Mlada Fronta is a French electronic producer who began his work in 1992. With the release of 1999's High Tension, Mlada Fronta gained worldwide recognition from fellow electro producers and fans alike. Since then, media outlets such as discogs.com, AllMusic.com, and others have praised Mlada Fronta's music. In 2013, Artoffact Records went on to release a ten CD boxset of all of Mlada Fronta's music, bonus tracks, remixes, and all video material stemming from 1993 to 2013. In more recent years, Mlada Fronta has dropped rougher sounds of industrial and experimental music, focusing strictly on electro and techno elements. 

Teaming up once more with M-Tronic who released 2001's Fe2O3, Mlada Fronta has brought out his latest - and one of his best - albums to date titled Outrun. This album is definitely made for fans of classic cult films where cars and car wrecks happen near all the time; Mad Max, Vanishing Point, Death Race 2000, and so on and so forth. What occurs in Outrun is a beautiful mesh of synthwave and electro which play just dandy with one another. 


'Melt Into The Road' is just one of those songs that would be played while an awesome intro car chase scene occurs. Whoever our badass protagonist is sways through city street while dodging and escaping the police through alleyways and other such routes that no one else knows. '200MPH' begins off with a sample from the original Mad Max films where the Nightrider appropriately sees his end. The song bursts between electro compositions and heavily 80s synth based chorus segments. 

'Speed For Life' is a very chill, club song that could easily be danced to as well as relaxed to; this is a song that ushers in the future that the 80s predicted. 'Straight Ahead' takes us into a more inflammable territory with wicked stems of higher pitched tech. The title track comes next and offers a mix of EBM and synthwave. Perhaps one of the more simplistic songs on the album, it is also one of the best for its minimalism. 

'Simulator 1983' is a much more grim sounding song; the synths darken, and the mood is more bleak. This would be where our protagonist gets into a ridiculous fight only to find out that whatever he or she is facing off with is much more than what they seem to the eye. 'Wild Race' is the song that immediately follows as our protagonist runs away - far way - from whatever they were just facing off with. 

As suggest by its title, 'Roller Coaster' is a much faster paced song that gets rid of most nods to synthwave and goes for a straightforward electro/techno track. Get your rave on, because this is where the song leads. 'Dust Cloud' leads us back into a frenzy with whispering synths guiding the background of the music. Perhaps this is where our protagonist faces off with the malevolent being that attempted to destroy them before; only this time they have the white hot heat of their muscle car helping them through this fight. 

'Take The Leap' is the song that plays out right as our protagonist takes down whatever Hell-ish nightmare that has been chasing them down all throughout the film. The protagonist looks down at his downed opponent only to place their boot deep in their body to make sure they are truly dead. And, lastly, 'Midnight Drive' is the smooth, sexy song that plays out as our driver rides out back onto the never ending road before them to experience their next journey. 

Mlada Fronta's Outrun is simply a gorgeous and story-telling inspiring experience that can only truly be appreciated by those fans of films where powerful muscle cars are bended into metal wrecks. The adrenaline fueled, vein pumping injection of steel to steel at two hundred and fifty miles per hour has never been so thought out on an album than this one that I've heard. Mlada Fronta has been at the forefront of the French electro movement since the nineties, and thanks to his constant, moving mind and creativity, I don't think he'll be disappearing anytime soon. 
Feb 11 2016