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Andy Bloyce expands on, completes, and possibly even challenges those who have gone before him. A prolific player and recorder in the field of Kosmische Musik under monikers such as The Soviet Space Dog Project, with This Island Earth (63:13) we have the first outing using his given name. Bloyce's sonic statement is discovered over this one hour plus duration. The result of a sensibility both technological and philosophical this release experiments fully with the Spacemusic form. Yet, it is also about the drift from the outer to the inner - which matters as much as the resulting illumination itself. Across the three tracks found on This Island Earth we find that while the complexity of the Berlin-School has been captured, it has not been tamed. Shaking hands with 1970s era Tangerine Dream, with a convincing directness and storytelling force this album fills the listening space with glorious amplitude, clarity and certainty - behind which lies something darkly mysterious and unidentifiable. Divined only from the contours of its vast shape we can feel the faint, vague vibrations of cosmic yearning. As synthesizer sounds slide against one another, the in-between places are loosened up with reverberant Mellotron flutes. Surrounded by an atmosphere of smoky darkness, a texture of eerie abandon gradually expands in the receptive mind. Pulsing sequencers running in machine precision below celestial synth-bourne melodies and spacey spiraling effects pervade this work - even as the direction stretches out to and back from abstraction. Framed as a mystery with no solution, these pieces capture well the adventure and enigma for which this genre has become known. Settling inside our own heads, into that elusive, spacious awareness beneath thought, we may become acquainted with the sense of freedom that this manner of music was meant to confer - and consider well our place on This Island Earth.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 16 January 2025 |
