| Artist: Robert Schroeder Album: Cygnus-A Released: 15 December 2010 |  |
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The LP Galaxie Cygnus-A has been treasured quietly by those bright enough to have purchased a copy after its first release in 1982. A mystical bridge between us and the greater cosmos this music was Robert Schroeder's imagination responding to The Universe. Long out of print, this work has not now been reissued but rather it has been resurrected on the CD Cygnus-A (50'24"). Here Schroeder remakes and attempts to improve upon the principle recording. Promoted as a note-for-note recreation, this new version also includes some interesting sonic updates and enhancements - along with two bonus tracks composed and arranged in the style of the original. Cygnus-A may somehow sound a bit different than the 1982 vinyl but upon listening to this new music we find still present Schroeder's wonderful sense of free thematic development. The seven electronic realizations play one into the next as one continuous musical concept. His expressing of machine beauty in music may be heard equally in the meticulous crafting of synthesized sounds and the melodious flight of his solo lead lines and dramatic harmonic shifts. While each section may be described as elemental, tonal lines vivified by a simple sequencer pattern upon a bed of sustaining synth strings, Schroeder's ethereal sense of certainty enlivens these parts in the language of the unimaginable vastness he is reaching for. From ominous rumblings to composed spacey suites, on Cygnus-A Robert Schroeder peers into the darkness of space and finds some light. One reason this music should not be changed is that it wears well as it is. Written in the past and the future at the same time Schroeder's act of recycling produces a realization as introspective as it is retrospective.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 19 January 2012 | |
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