Supercharged

Supercharged is another fragile, shimmering slice of chillout ambient post-rock from Füxa. Mainman Randall Nieman gets some help from the Telescopes' Stephen Lawrie and Joanna Doran, but the album sounds more like a single artist's vision than Nieman's earlier releases with Ryan Anderson. Though Nieman embraces the space rock label, especially since he was once nearly the king of the Detroit space rock scene, Supercharged sounds almost too organic over a majority of its tracks to be part of the genre. "420" and "It Was You" introduce trademark ethereal sci-fi sound effects, but for the most part Nieman is comfortable painting emotional moods with an acoustic guitar, quiet shuffling drums, and a throbbing bass. When his friends from the Telescopes come front and center on "Hide Away," wobbly electronic effects punctuate the moody, psychedelic drone of the players rather than dominating the mix. Nieman's music on Supercharged seems primarily geared toward giving a listener a pleasurable, gentle base with which to relax, and he consistently succeeds with the task. Optimistic, sweet songs like "The Formula" and "In Your Dreams" suggest a mingling of jazzy post-rock and trippy psychedelia, but there's nothing forced or cheesy as with the music of so many artists who fuse the genres together with too much prog pretension. Fans of Füxa's early releases will find Supercharged wholly endearing, and listeners who might have found Nieman's earlier work too spacy or ambient will be happy to find out that there's a sprightly bounce and kick swirled into Nieman's mood experimentations.