MIKE OLDFIELD: Live At Montreux 1981 DVD
The entire 105 minute performance shot professionally, presumably for TV, and featuring the Mike Oldfield Band that includes ex-Brand X drummer Morris Pert and bassist Rick Fenn. The good news is that it's practically all instrumental, the better news is that the instruments are just guitars, synths, keys, bass, drums and percussion and the best news of all is that, as an audio experience, it's Oldfield at his live best, with some superb guitar work throughout as he and the band cruise through 'Tubular Bells', 'Platinum', two lengthy medleys from 'Platinum', 'QE2' and 'Ommadawn' plus a longer version of 'Punkadiddle' all making up for a stunning live set. The bad news……….yeh, you knew that was coming - is that, as a visual treat, unless you actually fancy one of the guys there or Maggie Reilly, who contributes some "oohing" and "aaahing" at various points along the way, then you'll watch it once and it's debateable if you'll watch it again. The camera work is excellent, moving from musician to musician with regularity, so that musos can see how they play it, but the band doesn't exactly move much, there are no spectacular lighting effects and no superimposed computer graphics or visuals to act as much-needed extras. So, as a CD, it's essential listening - as a DVD, it's worth at least one run-through.
RIVERSIDE: Voices In My Head CD
You know that seriously strong prog band with a decidedly rockier touch - well, this isn't them - or rather it is, but it's not what you're expecting. Remember when Opeth dropped the thrashier side of things completely in favour of a more sedate Porcupine Tree approach - well, forgetting Porcupine Tree - or almost forgetting Porcupine Tree - this is what this lot have done. Over 5 studio tracks, 3 live tracks and thirty six minutes of music, they've provided previously unreleased tracks of prog songs that are a lot more introspective than most of what they're more well known for doing. That the Porcupine Tree influence is closer than you'd think, just listen to the five minute 'Acronym Love'' for proof, just so similar only with added keys for a proggier feel. Elsewhere it's more original as a strong performance from the band takes a more brooding set of songs forward, the next up being the seven minute Dna' that starts slowly and gradually builds into a solid slice of seriously strong prog with some searing guitar leads and plenty of rhythm guitar, string synth work and synth overlays, all sorts of subtleties added to the lurching rhythmic foundations that drive it all onwards. Elsewhere, across the rest of the studio and all the live tracks, it's a case of quality over anything else, as a consistent and excellent slice of strong but more reflective prog songs provide the other face of a remarkably talented prog band.
SANDSTONE: Looking For Myself CD£ SYLVAN: Posthumous Silence CD
On the same label, both of these albums succeed and fail in exactly the same way. Taking the Sylvan -German band - album first, it's a seventy minute, 15 track, prog-rock concept album with prog-metal overtones. Lyrically rich, the vocals, structure of the songs and arrangements are all rooted in the seventies, while the instrumentation from keys, synths, guitars, bass and drums, covers every nook from Pink Floyd to Threshold. It all flows well enough, it's immaculately produced, much of it sounds suitably vast, and the delivery is strong all round. Where, for me, it falls down, is that it's absolutely so predictable - you've heard it all before. That doesn't make it unpleasant - just dull. Part of this is that one hell of a lot of it is taken at the same pace, somewhere between powerful and plodding. It's OK for what it is and if you like that sort of powerful prog that builds and builds and does exactly what it says on its theoretical tin, then you'll get hours of delight over this.
In the case of the Sandstone - Polish band - album, it has just 6 tracks over fifty five minutes, so you get a lot more instrumental space - which is a great thing - particularly as their vocalist is even blander than the Sylvan guy. Once again, it's powerful, and while not a concept album, the lyrics are very much in that sort of story-telling, deep feelings vein. Instrumentally, it works well, but, as before, you've heard it all before from many a more successful band, and there don't seem to be any ideas in there that strike as fresh or original enough to take it out of the bland and into the good. The songs and arrangements and structure are solid enough, the playing on the powerful side and the sound quite expansive, but nothing that sends that required high voltage down your spine or heart-stopping heights achieved. Not a bad track here - but not a strikingly good one, either.
b>WITHIN TEMPTATION: Mother Earth CD+DVD
If you take an artist such as Lana Lane you're dealing with what is essentially the powerful end of prog, it rocks and it has more than a hint of heavy metal to it, but it remains pure prog. Then you take a band like Opeth - mixing the symphonic ends of prog with death metal and creating a remarkable hybrid that really works, as this huge blast of warm sounding explosivity fills your head with rock and our heart with passion. At the far end of the scale is a band such as Autumn's Grey Solace who create tracks revolving around heavenly female vocals and mix folk, industrial rock and symphonic prog in one amazing melting pot.
If you take all that, transport back into Gothic Times, pour it all into one huge cauldron and allow its fiery flames to mix it all to a wholly new recipe, then Within Temptation is the result.
With a female vocalist whose voice is the epitome of heavenly, operatic, powerful, passionate and adrenaline-rousing, often all at once, you have a band who can play delicate symphonic strings-keyboards-led prog one minute, anthemic rock the next and then come up with this massive huge-sounding mix of symphonic, metal, Gothic and prog in one titanic blast of a song. Ah yes, the songs. Every song will have the hairs standing up on the back of your neck as fourteen of them range from heartfelt and passionate through yearning impassioned intensity to all-out, guns-blazing Goth-Prog-metal attack, all the time those incredible female vocals flying overhead to majestic and jaw-dropping degree. Most of the songs are not only utterly addictive, not only prog-metal anthems, not only huge-sounding arrangements, but also immediate and yet the sort of thing that you'll want to play time and time again without losing any of the effect that endeared it all to you in the process.
Complete with a bonus DVD on the limited edition release, that features three live and one promo video plus backstage report, this is the sound of the most phenomenal female-led band in Goth-influenced symphonic-prog, folk--metal that you'll hear.
PSYCHEDELIC/STONER/SPACE-ROCK:
HAWKWIND: Take Me To Your Future Dualdisc
First release on the dualdisc format sees the band with an audio side featuring outtakes and songs from the sessions for the 'Take Me To Your Leader' album, plus a DVD side featuring 6 tracks, each taken from 6 separate DVD's of archive concerts that the band are releasing privately (not available through retail outlets) in the summer.
MONSTER MAGNET: Superjudge CD£8.99
Now at mid-price, this is the album that catapulted the band into the big league, with 11 on-fire tracks that bridged the gap between stoner-rock, psych-rock, heavy metal and space-rock with songs that are seriously addictive and yet with few actual hooks or discernible choruses along the way. Supercharged, electrifying guitar work courtesy of the twin leads of Ed Mundell & Dave Wyndorf are what makes this world go round, while the suitably hollered, almost bluesy-growelling at times, vocals echo a more acid-drenched Sabbath at times, with arrangements that keep you hooked and never at any point become tired or stale stoner workouts. The songs are loud and delivered in ball-breaking fashion, and at no point do they explode so violently it becomes overbearing, instead the stoner-rock aspect courses through its veins to awesome degree. Heavy metal in the purely psychedelic sense, the pace and structure are rock solid but never nuclear, using its dynamic bluesy swagger for as much effect as the guitar eruptions. Towards the end of the album is an eight minute cover of Hawkwind's 'Brainstorm' where the band really do explode and deliver as fantastic a version of this legendary space-rock track as you'd expect from a band of this caliber. Overall, a stunning stoner-rock album that's got more metal class than you'd expect.
ST-37: Future Memories CD
As far as I can make out, this is a CD of rare and previously unreleased tracks from the USA space/ psych- rock legends, originally recorded between 1988 and 2000, remastered for this CD and now presented as a complete body of work for the first time on a single CD. With 15 tracks in well over seventy minutes of music, spread over 12 years of work, the perhaps not-so-surprising thing is the flow of the album as a whole. From the earliest sessions where a positively acid-drenched psych-rock squall comes hammering out of the speakers in the form of two early four minutes songs of which the second is a freaky brew of space-rock with tripped-out lyrics and a head-bending sea of guitars and rhythm section that take you right "out there". From 1991, we have both sides of a rare vinyl single with four minutes of spiralling space-rock in the form of 'Look At Your Chair' followed by a more flowing brew of hgeady space-rock over the near five minutes of 'Pumpkinface'. Most of what follows in terms of the four-five minute tracks sound like a space-rock version of anything off the first two Brian Eno albums, with songs, structures and vocals that aren't a mile away from those classic albums, albeit in a parallel universe, but every bit as brilliant in their own weirdly anarchic and scorching delivery manner. There is a lengthy track - the eleven minute 'Nature Of Smoke' that starts as a space-rock workout with guitars roaring ahead as the whole thing climbs and turns into this psychedelic workout where guitars blaze then relax only to work up once again and rise even higher. The production here is almost akin to the Pink Fairies or Mighty Baby tracks off the seminal 'Glastonbury Fayre' album, all of which only serves to add to the fantastic festi-trippy-psych-space rock atmosphere that this CD exudes by the bongload.
ROCK/METAL:
ADEQUATE SEVEN: Here On Earth CD
When, in the first minute of an album, you've covered heavy rock, snotty punk, ska and anthemic emo, you can't help but smile and wonder what on earth you've let yourself in for. Odd part is that, once you've got over the shock, it actually works, and that's down to the writing department. Someone's got an ear for what makes a song stick in your head, either despite or because of the assortment of styles that go to make it up. Then, just to test you even further, they invoke the gods of rap and peroxide pop on track three's 'Now It's Time', complete with trumpet solo just to make you throw the towel in, give up analysing it and just listen to the darned thing. But you think they're only toying around with you, when you find that they blend the whole shooting match in one almighty cauldron of styles in the stumbling flow that is 'Across The Bridge' and, by now, you've lost the plot completely as to what this band is all about, but the phrases "ska-core" and "emo-dub" keep popping up in your head as you weather the storm and find out that getting this wet can actually be quite a pleasurable experience. It's eclectic but it hangs together, it's energetic, with more colours than Joseph's Coat and yet somehow it works - don't ask!
B MOVIE HEROES: Calibrate CD
Any rock band around right now that can mix great song-writing with arrangements that truly rock, all wrapped up in a production that opens it all out and lets it shout to the skies, has got to be taken seriously as potentially the next big thing in rock - and this lot are among that prestigious crowd. Every song has the burning passion of the best emo mixed with the roar of the finest boogie-metal allied to the intensity of the most electrifying pop-punk, in other words, slow or fast, every song is its own anthem. With lead and multi-tracked vocals perfectly suited to the songs, up front and so well sung to reflect the pace of the song - yearning on some, impassioned throughout and positively angry on others - the band play it tight and hot with a blazing wall of guitars and rhythm section work that crunches and drives the whole thing forward. The songs are instant and addictive, many with more hooks than a fisherman's rod, but the best thing is that you simply don't ever tire of hearing them - the mark of great rock-punk songwriting, for sure. The ones that are truly on-fire are amazing - the sort of emo-nu metalli-punk anthems that you just want to turn up real loud and let the world hear them - while throughout the whole 13 song, 55 minute album, there is not one song that's less than incendiary, passionate and tight - mostly all three. As anthemic nu-metal albums go, this is a winner and such essential listening, there should be a law in place that fines you if you don't own a copy!
LAP: Life Among People CD-EP
For many years now, we've been blessed in the world of heavy rock with that immortal thing called the "power trio" - now, in the age of hardcore, emo and thrash, we have a new "power trio" for a younger generation - and this one exudes enough power to light up Manchester. Playing seven songs in 22 minutes, the band whip up a storm but at the same time remain musically satisfying and commercially addictive, a sort of serious answer to the dumb fun of Blink 182 or Sum 41 - only harder and heavier and faster. Their lyrics are actually choc full of politically aware and opinionated eloquence - only problem being that they are generally delivered by a vocalist possessing anything from an anthemic yearning to a raging roar, and without a lyric sheet you're penetrating this dense wall of immense hard rocking sound to find out what they are -and good luck to you! That said, every song on here is a 100% slice of fast-paced intensity with a blistering indie-hardcore, guitar-fuelled attack that blazes a trail to your heart while the rhythm section really lets rip and charges right at you with the determination of a bullet with your name on it. By "TV Diet", things calm down briefly enough for you to hear the opening lyrics, before another massive sounding wall of guitars comes in, the rhythms stomp and the vocals veer from rage to passionate in an instant. This is scorching stuff that defies you not to get caught up in it inexorable and stunning musical wake, as you wallow in 22 minutes of pure supercharged emo-intensity.
ME (AGAINST THE WORLD): I.D.S.T. CD
Ooooo……….a dirty great, bass-sludge, guitar-burning, hulking big riff - wonderful!! Within 40 seconds of the opening track, I'm in love with this album as the intro leads to "the riff" and this smoking mass of crunching drums drives it even more forcefully onwards as the vocalist comes in and sings the lyrics in what amounts to a hybrid of Dundee's The Rise and USA band Blink 182, as this awesome slice of addictive, anthemic song-writing just goes nuclear and carries you along in its totally addictive and powerful adrenaline rush that is boogie metal and emo-punk colliding head on to glorious effect. If this wasn't good enough, then when 'More Associates Than Friends' erupts into life, you'll be left jaw-dropped as another song blends anthem and attitude, unforgettable riffs and roaring punk guitars, but this time even more on fire and even more dynamic, with some scorching nu-metal wall-of-sound guitar that suddenly drop down only for the whole monster of song and playing to rise up and spiral to even greater heights as the song simply glows white hot and you're charging all over the room in air guitar ecstasy as the most addictive song you've heard in ages defies you not to repeat play it, there and then. But you move on - and find another rapid-fire piece of punk rock unfolding, as the band seem to distil the essence into a more punkified sound and roar ahead in amazing fashion, all the ingredients of vocals, chorus, raging guitars and solid rhythms adding up to the perfect recipe for yet another totally amazing, energetic anthem. 'Pretty Thing' provides a more muscular slant and returns to add the nu-metal blaze that lights up this album as another immense slice of insanely catchy song-writing and vocal delivery positively soars above the mighty swirling, driving guitar-fuelled leads and smoking rhythm section riffs. Only 4 tracks in - and already it's a classic. Best part is that the rest of the album's 6 tracks are every bit as good as what you've heard to now, all adding up to what has to be regarded as one of the finest overtly punk-styled but more inventive albums that's gonna come out in 2006. Every song an anthem, every song a winner.
ROOT DECO: This Island Earth CD
Whether it's the blistering hi-octane boogie that comes across like a nu-millennium rock Dr Feelgood or the Jefferson Airplane-meets-La's treats of chiming guitars, solid rhythms and yearning vocals, the one thing you cannot deny about every one of the 16 tracks on this album, is that they are songs of great quality and long-lasting pleasure. Delivered with everything spot on - vocals, guitars, rhythms - everything's addictive, cohesive and rousing. There's a decidedly sixties and seventies element to some of it while still sounding remarkably contemporary, as the adrenaline-fuelled guitar riffs and leads combine with the more uplifting psych-rock of some of the more, admittedly still solid and urgent sounding, USA West Coast styled songs, unfolding to perfection. Overall, though, it's exciting, memorable and repeat playable song after song, the only slight criticism might be that there's actually too many of them - for once, it might just be possible to have too much of a good thing! A distilled ten tracks at one sitting would be perfect, but this give you the opportunity to mix and match, leading to even more endless hours of delight. It's a fantastic, highly energetic, overtly blues-rock album that hasn't got a less than engaging song on it (even allowing for the last one where a female vocal leads the way and it seems ever so slightly out of place compared with what's gone before). Unhesitatingly recommended.
SAKURAI: The Room We Do Not Speak Of CD
It's only 9 tracks and thirty four minutes, but it speaks volumes. Decidedly heavy, it's nevertheless something you can't readily classify. It's got elements of all the popular metal genres from hardcore to emo, but the one thing you can say is that it's a solid, consistent, insistent and cohesive album from start to finish. With a vocalist who's right upfront, but not to the detriment of the music, who sings the songs so well, and who really injects his all into them, the album's songs roar ahead on hugely dense sounding riffs and rhythms embellished with some smoking leads as they go. The bass is massive and fuzzed, the drums suitably crunching and driving while the guitars soar, glide and glow throughout. Unafraid to take a song in all manner of twists and turns, this is both inventively arranged as well as being engaging without actually having any songs that stick around in your head, although I reckon this will change, the more familiar you get with its heady mix of molten rock. They also use dynamics well enough, too, allowing periods of (relative) calm before the mighty machine fires up once again and roars into action. Overall, it's a standout set of songs that - in a good way - seem to last longer than the 34 minute running time, and an album to which you'll be returning many times in the years ahead.
SYNTH MUSIC:
ASTRO VOYAGER: Temporal Gravitation CD
Don't judge a book by the cover - or to be accurate, don't think that this is 15 short tracks - 'coz it isn't - it's a forty two minute sea of synth music where all the sections run into each other to provide this flowing and meticulously crafted electronic music album. Although working within each sectioned time frame, what is outstanding is the attention that the musician has put into every track - whether it's space music or busy sounding melodic/rhythmic synth dynamics, what is always the case is that nothing is allowed to stand still. Taking its cues much more from things such as Jarre, Vangelis and, more particularly, the more commercial synth music albums on the old I.C. label, what you will find are ocean of melodies, solid electronic drums, strong-sounding synth backgrounds, deep bass rivers and plenty of the brightest tunes on the electronic front. Even with the spacier passages, this is an album for someone who likes a good melody and to have a lot of different elements all set within a compartmentalised concept. If you like a load of great tunes, a more symphonic approach to synth music and an overall solid and heart-warming performance, this one's got your name written all over it.
CODE INDIGO: Chill CD
It takes a complete listen to the whole of this album to provide an overview of what it's all about, and that I have done. The first thing to say is that it's another epic - nearly eighty minutes long - but an epic that I just SO good, it almost becomes too much of a good thing, but see further on for an explanation of that. Secondly, although I'd like to bet that Dave Wright doesn't see it like this, this is effectively the third in a remarkable trilogy of albums that started with the Callisto project, continued with the last Dave Wright album and now, I would imagine, ends with this new Code Indigo album. The link between them is one of quality, accessibility, writing & arranging and the ability to produce predominantly synths-based music that "relates" as much, if not more, to the likes of early Mike Oldfield and mid-seventies Pink Floyd, as it does to the "greats" of synth music.
So, what you have here is the quartet of Wright, Robert Fox, Dave Massey and, most crucially, Andy Lobban on lead and rhythm guitars. I say "most crucially" for, although this is a synths music-dominated album, the guitar work is what gives it that all-important extra-special ingredient, and the reason you hearken back to the classic work of Oldfield and Floyd. The opening track sets the scene for and the flavour of this album to perfection, with its gorgeous but strong synth moods and the soaring electric guitar work that gives the whole thing very much of a 'Wish You Were Here'-era Floyd feel but with so much more depth and soundscapes courtesy of the superbly emotive synths work of Fox and Wright.
The first fifty three or so minutes of this album are absolutely spellbinding - rarely will you hear music of this quality unfold so exquisitely that every track carries you along with it to the extent that you listen to it as one complete piece (which it nearly is if you follow the whole flow and mood of the music) with so many ideas in there yet so perfectly executed. That's not to say the last twenty five or so minute are not as good - they are - but, particularly for the four part suite 'Lost Radio', the flavour of the album goes off at a different tangent - no bad thing for music of this quality - but after the glories of what you've just heard, you see what I mean when I say you almost get too much of a good thing. But it stands up alongside what's gone before, so you can't complain.
Overall, as synth music albums go, it really is a classic.
CYBOTRON: Implosion Remastered+Bonus Tracks CD
For the first time, on CD, newly digitally remastered from the original tapes and complete with five bonus tracks from the previously unreleased fourth studio album that had the working title of 'Abbey Moor', here we have the third studio album from the only Australian synth music band of the late seventies/early eighties. Having sold the original album in fair quantities when it came out on vinyl, and having not heard the thing since then, what amazed me was just how good it sounded, the remaster aiding considerably in that respect, and how timeless the music still sounds. By this time Cybotron were a unique band - two guys on synths and keyboards, one who doubled up on drums, plus a full-time bassist, playing compositions that were dominated by the synths as lead instruments, but of which five out of the six tracks are accompanied by real acoustic drums and electric bass. All this means that this is a genuine prog-synth crossover album which can equally be enjoyed by both sets of fans, but swings far more towards the synth music side of the fence. With tracks from three to nearly nine minutes in length, you get a high-flying sea of synth leads backed by tight and solid bass and drums, a sound that is both addictive, strange in the context of synth music, but which really grabs your attention and stays there. Because of the melodies and rhythms, comparisons aren't easy - something between Klaus Schulze and instrumental Greenslade-ELP might come closest, while the longest track on the original album, at a shade under ten minutes, is the only all-synths composition, and comes across as a mix of Froese, Schulze & Dyson in its own flowing, multi-layered, cosmic, sequencer-driven way. Overall, though, a thoroughly solid, melodic, cohesive album that still has a wide appeal. Of the bonus tracks, three are originals, one's a cover and one's a version of the lead track of 'Implosion' with added electric guitar. Of the three originals, you can tell that the band had moved into the eighties with a much more digital sounding sea of drum rhythms while the synths had that distinctive early eighties art-rock feel to them, as indeed, do the compositions themselves, so that now you get a mix of prog, synth and Nu-romantic, all still solid and melodic, full of warmth, but with a wholly funkier quality to them. The cover is a three minute run-through of the familiar 'Peter Gunn' theme from Henry Mancini and covered most famously by later seventies ELP, while this version isn't a million miles away, only using sax as much as synths for even greater dynamic, textural and searing effect. The final track and guitar-laden version of 'Eureka' is seven minutes of prog-synth power that sound like a mix of early Shreeve and Pink Floyd, and just surges inexorably forward on a heady set of lumbering rhythms, space synths, searing lead guitar and synth melodies. As a whole entity, then, various disguises, all of them consistent and a really enjoyable album.
FOOD FOR FANTASY: The Secret Of Dreamin' CD
Reissue of what is essentially an album by synthesist Robert Schroeder, who plays all the synths and keys and handles the rhythm programming, plus electric guitarist Phil Molto. With 12 tracks over seventy seven minutes, what you have here is an album that's very much in the vein of the more flowing, full-bodied more melodic music that you'd find on a more "Americanised" synths-guitars album. In many ways, some of it's like a "new age Edgar Froese" if you want a comparison. But, the two musicians combined create a set of tracks that range from slow and heavenly to solid and cohesive, with a production that brings to life all the assorted layers and soundscapes. On most of the tracks there are distinct melodies - the sort of thing that is so easily digestible - even head-lingering tunes along the way, while the guitar work rings out in strong yet restrained fashion, as layers of occasional heavenly choirs, string synths, vast synth backdrops and more, all combine to create huge-sounding tracks that build, ebb and flow into a quite vast and strong set of three to nearly eleven minutes long. Often, the addition of big, beefy sequencer lines alongside the chugging electronic drums gives added weight and drive to the tracks. Throughout, the electric guitar work is incisive and sharp, but flows and soars at the same time. As synths and guitars music go, if you want it strong, commercial, solid and something that you can get your teeth into without ruining them on sugar, then this one's a good one.
JOHN FOXX: Tiny Colour Movies CD£13.99
The latest in the series of instrumental synthesizer music albums finds the musician, on the opening couple of tracks, moving away from huge-sounding heavenly music of cathedral-like proportions, into a more spacey, darker, minimalist world of flowing, floating, drifting music, with synths that always seem to be moving slowly forward as mulit-layered clouds that merge and separate. Then, all of a sudden, a giant electronic drum beat emerges for the third track and an almost 'Oxygene'-sounding melody flows along on a very Jarre-esque track with slices of Tim Blake space synth swoops on the way, for over seven minutes. The four minute 'Skyscrapers' is dominated by high-flying string synths and deep bass undercurrents as the soundscapes travel slowly on in spacey yet solid realms, while ;The Projectionist' is just under three minutes of ringing, high-register electronic drifts. The near six minute 'Looped Los Angeles' is more like Euro-mainland synth as practiced by the likes of early "Kraftwerk-meets-Ron Boots" with solid, phased and normal sounding sequencers topped with melodies of the more sparing variety, as synths swoop and soar all around the core of the track. 'Points Of Departure' is a one minute choral piece of heavenly proportions then there follows a total of 8 tracks, all under three minutes, and all representing various facets of the melodic, spacey, rhythmic and cosmic music soundscapes and layers that I've thus far described. Overall, still heavenly, more varied, every bit as consistent and enjoyable as the 'Cathedral Oceans' albums and a welcome step forward from that series.
PHILIPPE GRANCHER: 3000 Miles Away CD
Semi-legendary (well, anything on the original French Tapioca label is pretty legendary!) electronic/keyboard music from French musician and, although it doesn't say a word on the sleeve, I think this was from around 1973 or something like that. Either way, it's an archive release on CD for the first time ever. Musically, it's in its own world - you couldn't compare it to anyone else at the time - and you still can't! On the same label as French electronic pioneers such as Heldon and Verto at the time, will give you some idea that this is a mix of inventive, melodic, psychedelic and atmospheric, but with an almost avant-edge that gives it the originality to which it still clings. Using piano, phased electronics, analogue soundscaping, touches of really early seventies symphonic Vangelis (witness the final three minutes of the ten minute title track), the requisite cyclical sound patterns from early synthesizers that early Heldon could produce, the musician allows it all to pass by as though he has an idea, builds it up, decides he's had enough, and moves on, sometimes quite quickly, sometimes taking at last a couple of minutes, but most of the time it is melodic and accessible, a fair bit of piano giving an almost classical touch, and, like early Heldon, the briefest of forays into acoustic guitar and electronics, spiralling into space, before floating off into another sea of rippling piano chords that heralds the arrival of the next idea. Decidedly seventies, fairly minimal for a melodic album and quite different from anything else.
