Sulatron Freak Valley is always one of those festivals that I’ve wanted to attend, but have never had the opportunity to do so. If I had gone, I would have most certainly chosen one of the two years that Electric Moon played there as I would be guaranteed one trip out into the cosmos. Here we have their live set from the 2019 festival, and what an awe-inspiring […]
Gary Parsons
259 posts
New Heavy Sounds Abyss is the second proper album from the dark witch doom duo BlackLab from Osaka in Japan, and carries on their mission to pummel any pretenders to the doom throne to death. As a duo the sound is big and live, I would imagine it would scream into your ears from the pits of the darkest beyond. Its a sound that unnerves you as much […]
Deutsche Grammophon The brothers Eno‘s Mixing Colours album was released at the start of the global pandemic of Covid-19, when most countries were in a state of lockdown. From reactions I read online, its soothing tones certainly helped many people through that difficult time, as it transported them to somewhere else away from the confinement of their living rooms and gave them a semblance of peace through a […]
All Saints Spinner is an oddity, even in Brian Eno’s vast back catalogue; the music was originally conceived as the soundtrack to Derek Jarman’s film Glitterbug, a posthumously released compilation of old super 8 film that had been gathered together as the director was dying of AIDS.
Ndeya To consider Jon Hassell’s career to date is like the Pentimento of the title; a layering of ideas that slowly emerges to create something different to the earlier form it started from. Structurally, his work is not too dissimilar to that of painting, so each new listen reveals something fresh about the performance, much in the same way that new essences can be discovered when you study […]
Relapse It’s been five years since Zombi’s last album (Shape Shift) and sixteen years since their debut album Cosmos, so any new release by the band is always an exciting thing. The two members have hardly been idle in the last five years; Steve Moore has released several soundtrack albums and a smattering of 12” EPs, while AE Paterra has had a smattering of releases using his Majeure […]
Ndeya I first became aware of Jon Hassell’s music in the early 1980s because of his collaboration with Brian Eno on the Fourth World Volume 1: Possible Musics album. Then of course a little later he worked with David Sylvian on his rather wonderful Brilliant Trees album of 1983. He was one of the few EG label artists at the time that truly straddled the divide between jazz […]
Cooking Vinyl With its cover and title looking and sounding like a Crass record from the eighties, this is very different Orb than the cosmic warriors that bought us The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld all those years ago. Abolition Of The Royal Familia has a message in its notes of Extinction Rebellion‘s fight to save the planet; a worthy theme, and certainly one worth shouting about.
Joyful Noise This is Magic Sword’s third album. and their fourth record if you include an EP released a short while ago. Each record comes with a comic book telling an overarching story that the band have put to music, so in a way its the mother of all concept albums that even out-does progressive rock bands like Yes
Phantom Limb A long-overdue retrospective of Venezuelan synthesist and ambient composer Miguel Noya is always going to be something rather special. However, as Noya has been active since the 1980s, giving a broad perspective and overview of his work will always be a difficult task. As most composers work from album to album, a compilation like Canciónes Intactas — especially one that covers such a vast period — […]
Sulatron Zone Six comprises Electric Moon members Sula Bassana and Komet Lulu and former Embryo guitarist Rainer Neeff. They were founded back in 1997 and have intermittently done gigs and released albums throughout that time. Kozmik Koon is a huge ever-growing pulsating universe of sound dedicated to space rock stalwart and all-round good guy Kozmik Ken and the late Richard van Ess, a friend of the band. It […]
Sulatron / Pancromatic So where do I begin? This is a six-CD retrospective boxset of some of Sula Bassana’s music since 2006 containing nearly thirty tracks and beautiful presented in three gatefold sleeves, all in a hard box — this truly is a thing of wonder and a must-have for all Sula / Electric Moon fans as they are limited to 500 copies (a vinyl version is to […]
Beggars Arkive Was it really forty years ago that I popped into my local Our Price record shop on my way home from school to pick up a copy of Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric“?
London 4 October 2019 The last time I saw Magma live was at an incredible performance in Paris in February 2017, when they played backed by an orchestra. This added an extra stirring and unearthly quality to Magma’s already off-world sound. It was also the finest performance I had seen the band play in the many times I have seen them. Islington Assembly Hall is a perfect kind […]
Sunhair Music Germany seems to be producing some of the world’s top space and acid rock bands at the moment. Certainly the wonderful Electric Moon and its various offshoots have lead the way over the past few years, giving a wide catalogue of interstellar titles that have taken the blueprint from older bands and expanded it further outward. Acid Rooster are a band that has sprung up up […]
London 14 July 2019 It’s Rick Wakeman’s seventieth birthday, and what better way to celebrate than two nights of his early concept album Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, played in full with lots of extra tracks to help the extravaganza become fully realised. Originally the piece was performed and recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday 18 January 1974. At this point, Wakeman was […]
UMC I first bought a copy of Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks when it came out in 1983 on vinyl and a copy has remained in my collection ever sincem as its one of my all-time favourite Brian Eno albums. The early 1980s were as many artists began to explore this area and records were beginning to sell rather well.
Kscope “All art is solitary and the studio is a torture area” – Alexander Liberman. There is a certain type of melancholia about Giancarlo Erra’s Ends that has its roots in a very British and American form of ambient music. It is that rare thing that manages to capture the beauty and the sadness of a place, and Ends also offers the sense of memory and moments past […]