Moderator is a young producer from Athens, Greece. He released his first two albums with Cult Classic Records, with his last album, The World Within, coming in 2015. He now comes back with his most ambitious album to date, Sinner’s Syndrome.

Listening to Sinner’s Syndrome, I couldn’t help but think of the three-album theory. For those that aren’t familiar, the basic gist is that it often takes a young artist two albums to figure out what their artistic voice is and how to record themselves before they hit their stride. That’s certainly the case with Moderator on this album. His first two albums hinted at a lot of potential, but they didn’t quite come together. Taking some time after his last effort, Moderator delivers an album in Sinner’s Syndrome that is ambitious, cinematic, coherent, and grand. A couple of things really help this album realize its potential. One is that Moderator does a great job of picking out vocal dialogue samples and spreading them out so that they help tell a coherent story and give you ideas to think about as the music plays out. There’s many a young producer who will just find a clip they think is cool or funny and splice it into their beats, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the music. In other cases, some producers will just pack the music with dialogue and not give you any chance to just enjoy the beats. Moderator does a great job on both counts on this album. The other factor that really helps this album out is just how well everything flows together and tells a story with the music. Relying heavily on twangy rockabilly and blues guitar to set the tone over mostly downtempo beats, a lot of Sinner’s Syndrome ends up sounding somewhere between a Spaghetti Western soundtrack and a Dan the Automator joint. It’s the type of album you can put on and just get lost in the musical storytelling, as Moderator takes you through all these twists and turns as he muses on the morality of humans.

Moderator certainly seems to have hit his stride on Sinner’s Syndrome. It’s a thoughtful, carefully planned album with a unique style. It’s the type of album that’s so carefully constructed that you can listen to it over and over and discover something new each time through. I’m very happy to have seen this young man make the jump with this album.