One of the best contemporary, cohesive instrumental albums I've heard (RR7349 by S U R V I V E)

check it out via YouTube or Spotify

tl;dr
you'd be remiss to not give this album a listen, especially if you are a fan of Stranger Things or instrumental electronic music.

In today's age of electronic music, songs are king and albums are rarely what they used to be in the days of cohesive concept albums. Nowadays, albums are more of a delivery mechanism for a few singles than a creative work meant to be appreciated collectively.

Another challenge in instrumental music is the narrative aspect -- the ability to tell a story and evoke specific emotions is tricky sans vocals. The synth trio that is S U R V I V E does just that with fantastic precision on their latest album RR7349. They are best known for scoring the popular Netflix show Stranger Things, which they did a masterful job with, but this album stands on its own. It's eerie, powerful, haunting, intense, brutal, and awe inspiring throughout its 9 songs.

They do an excellent job painting an emotional landscape and taking the listener through many different feelings and energies. Dirt, one of the standouts from the beginning, starts with relentless, rhythmic, punchy laser synths and adds layers swelling atmosphere as the song progresses. This is contrasted with periods of near silence and discordant rumbles as they build to crescendos.

High Rise is another favorite that feels very uplifting and energetic. This one especially feels very existential to me, like it's telling a positive story about the experience of living in general.

On a lot of these songs, there is an interesting juxtaposition of harsh staccato rhythms with swelling melodies, of very polished, artificial sounding synths with more organic textured sounds.

If you all are interested in music content like this, I'll be writing up some more mini reviews of music that has stood out a lot to me lately.