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A performance of music usually includes many sets of eyes on the musician - who (to do their work) must block them all out. This is not so with those coming in to the WXPN/STAR'S END studio. This select group may do their music before a relaxed, remote audience - but however heavily lidded, the sleepy being transmitted to definitely have their ears intently open. Jeffrey Koepper came into the relative calm of the 18 June 2017 radio broadcast of STAR'S END to draw on the limitless freedom of the Spacemusic genre. Before thousands of distant listeners his music roamed over the airwaves and beyond the studio - to eventually become the album Transmitter (58'18"). The realm of space resists attempts to reduce its music to a sentence or two, so describing this kind of work will be difficult. In a mastery of detail we journey across seven tracks and textures - traveling through realms clotted with stars and pulsing with energy. Activating constellations of brain cells as wondrous as anything imagined by astronomers, we are guided simply by our own lush thoughts. The mood encountered on Transmitter is quite inward. To fall into the rhythms of this trek, one must lose all sense of time. Softened atmospherics provide areas of gently meditative repose, transformed as sequencer loops rise through still tones. While coiled patterns circle burnished synth strings, we find every flash to be offset by a cool, radiant stillness - as its gorgeous dream sequence expands and contracts along an easy arc. Affably energetic, the potent, revved-up sections offer dramatic momentum. Doubled in echo, electronic blips run through the night - eventually tugging the minor-key chords back into the shadows. Eliciting plush, pliant harmony from his synthesizers, Koepper finds the gorgeous hidden universe STAR'S END travels through every week. Spacemusic is the perfect term to use when describing Transmitter - as the scale of this music offers no shortage of possibilities. Drawn into a musical experience of larger proportions the play and shade of our interior becomes an enthralling space of imagination. Most Electronic Musicians use electricity as raw material. Possessing a unique human-synthesizer connection, Jeffrey Koepper may possibly be extracting energy from the same current powering his instruments. Thanks to the commercial release of this CD, we may feel the charge too, and return to this singular wireless emanation whenever we so desire.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 15 February 2017 |
