Interplanetary by Ruptured World (Review)
With 2020’s Interplanetary, Rennie returns to the distant future. Ten years have passed since the original Proxima Centauri b mission in 2018’s Exoplanetary, with no word of its fate. A search-and-rescue mission is being planned, led by Dr. Phoenix Macrae, son of the original mission’s chief science officer. Interplanetary details Macrae and his crewmates’ journey across the interstellar void, with Macrae recording his experiences. (Or rather, transmitting them psionically back to mission control on Earth.)
Interplanetary’s overarching theme concerns the strangeness of deep space travel and its effects on the human mind (which are extrapolated further in the album’s liner notes). Unsettling soundscapes abound, evoking the sense of crossing unfathomable and unforgiving cosmic distances, while instances of technobabble (e.g., “vacuum parsec readiness applications,” “time-bending activation procedures”) help to sell the sci-fi conceit. As with previous “Planetary” albums, the narration only enhances the effect, from the increasingly disjointed countdown on “T Minus 20” (which suggests the effects of time dilation setting in immediately) to Macrae’s descriptions of bizarre-yet-awe-inspiring cosmic phenomena during “Time-Bending Activation” and “Before the Nothingness Abounds.”
Like previous albums, moments of beauty appear amidst the disquietude. “Pre-Launch Deep Space Mission Brief” is one of the “Planetary” series’ most haunting songs thanks to some sparse, Harold Budd-esque piano that contrasts a disorienting backdrop and a synthwave denouement courtesy of labelmate In Quantum. Although “Continuum” opens with some of the series’ most harrowing sounds, as the disembodied voices of the damned swirl around you, more subdued and sublime sonics eventually emerge. The aforementioned In Quantum also appears on several other tracks, including album highlight “Standard Logic Unit GX GX 33 Zero,” where his synthwave arpeggios dovetail nicely with Rennie’s narration and darker atmospherics.