| Artist: Gert Emmens + Ruud Heij Album: Return to the Origin | 
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The genre of Spacemusic is based on the concept of the future. It's true that musicians working in this field have always been perceived as making music that is ahead of its time, but that's just half the story. In actuality, it's not that the world isn't ready for this mode of expression, but rather that this kind of music always points to some unspecified faint point in the distance and to the possibilities of tomorrow. Return to the Origin (70'40"), the debut collaboration between Gert Emmens and Ruud Heij, is an album based upon the time-honored forms, figures and sound designs of '70s era Berlin-School Spacemusic. The album moves as if powered by star drive engines. Each of the album's progression of tightly composed episodes are centered upon the traveling, cyclical repetitions of splintered rhythms created by Heij's pattern generating sequencers. Gliding above, Emmens' melodic narrative relates a tale told through a wandering ribbon of warm synth lines - rising, falling and bending in time with the tapestry of interlocking electronic pulses and beats. Unrolling expectantly, the thread is thrilling but the weave leaves us spellbound. The duo augment each other well on this poetic meditation into the vastness of human spirit as explored through music technology. They are well versed in the vocabulary of this genre's early masterworks. For the listener, Return to the Origin is a means to cover great distances while lost in our own imaginations. For Emmens and Heij, it is part of their quest to locate themselves in the world of their musical ancestors.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 25 March 2004 | |