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Andy Bloyce practices Electronic Music under several aliases. As The Soviet Space Dog Project he produces works pursuing the Berlin-School tradition first established by Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream in the 1970s. His trilogy of releases Experiments in Sound (66:28), Further Experiments in Sound (65:38) and Advanced Experimentation (22:48) showcase the incessant activity of a person who is constantly working - reimagining the sense and sensations of a boldly imaginative age. Pursuing meaning in nuances of format, color, texture, and the other aesthetic givens of his medium Bloyce's dreamy abstracted landscapes turn more absorbing and exciting when actively contemplated by the listener. Using the specific vocabulary of the Kosmische Musik era the "Experiments" triplex presents inventive works of a far-reaching atmosphere. The music opens up space and then travels through it - to sonic realms of new depth and intimacy. Expressing his compositional precision TSSDP shows a striking agility to conjure elaborate synthetic forms, and, once positioned above mechanized patterning, really letting it rip. Subtle and syncopated the flickering echo of sequencer notes propels us along the tack of a quietly turning galaxy. Generating charges of rhythmic snap and chromatic consonance the wheezing, whirring and winding of modulated sounds yield broad planes of alternating density. From the rush and roar of these dense undercurrents striding lead lines estrange and enchant, emotionally spark, then soon become soothing and lilting - as if beamed in from some distant district of the sky. As raw waveforms blend with other rounded tones, underlying structures soften in relation to variations in opacity. In a reverent engagement with craft, entwined with the inherited yearning to open up new vistas, this "Space Dog" evokes his inner world, to say something about himself that cannot be stated in words. We may never know the precise idea or feeling that carried him through the creation of this series. It may be a way of hearing, understanding and metabolizing an innermost meaning, or maybe just a fascination with technology and systems. But artists such as this have pushed the genre forward, further into the creative zone, opening it out wider, with new timbres, from new instruments, manifesting new moods of mystery and discovery - along a path found one sound at a time.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 7 January 2021 |
