KiloWatts: The Gatherings 22 April 2023

KiloWatts: The Gatherings 22 April 2023
Released: 27 April 2024
www.thegatherings.org

Even after three decades of existence The Gatherings Concert Series is still giving up its secrets. From the extensive archives of event recordings comes yet another remarkable benefit album of which fans of innovation will be examining and meditating on for years to come. The Gatherings 22 April 2023 (40:44) provides the complete live presentation by the Philadelphia-based KiloWatts (a.k.a. Jamie Watts) – who on this date managed to fill the three dimensional sanctuary space of St Mary’s Hamilton Village as fully as he did the listening minds of all those in attendance. Confidently in control Watts aptly added some delightful new content to our aural data banks. Under quick review this creation may seem like a 40 minute mere Ambient jam. Not so. The performance methodically took its time to get where it was going – one luxurious moment after another. A genuinely striking piece, this recital’s route was rich with incident, texture and color. First through mist, gloom and shadow, then as if touched by some rare light the music sparked dreams about love, fate and more. With its decorative flourishes, ribboning synth leads and vivid chordal motion this staging supplied moments of great artistry while pushing into new sonic territory. Besides all the electronic invention, Watts is a very competent keyboardist – a fact which becomes apparent as rapid turns at the synth lead to expressive electric piano accents and a grand piano resolution. A wonderful work of the imagination The Gatherings 22 April 2023 plays as a finely nuanced musical exhibition of surprising emotional power. It is not like anything Watts has made. It is not like anything anyone else has made, even though it contains echoes of dozens of other realizations that appear to have fed the musician’s fertile imagination. This concert construction has no center. It wraps around you. Fleeting, it comes and goes – but not without leaving a mysteriously beautiful human trace.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 25 April 2024

Cosmic Ground: Melt

Cosmic Ground: Melt
Released: 12 April 2024
www.cosmicground.de

For any chords of comfort the listener will please visit the New Age album bin. Embracing the limiting and corrosive effects of our modern times and what it can do to the heart and the imagination, recording under the name Cosmic Ground Electronic Musician Dirk Jan Müller returns with Melt (66:04) – his six track high-tech trek back to the birth of thought by way of the furthest reaches of the aural universe. If not love-at-first-listen, then it certainly will at the very least yield a kind of Sci-Fi fascination. Stripped to its basics Melt is a brain stirring work imbued with the mysterious promise of possibility and rousing sense of freedom associated with the field of Spacemusic. Eerily expectant it feeds our uneasiness – as the layering of conscious and unconscious perspectives demands otherworldy leaps of imagination. Surrendering to the disquiet we enter a world of secrets. As ominous drones are let out beneath a series of modular mutations a narrative of being and becoming grows clearer. Sharing sparks in traikin sequencer spirals we are encouraged to dream freely among the motoring notes and machine pulse. At times the allusions coalesce into indecipherable murk, while elsewhere may be encountered a voluptuous richness of tone – just one example of the many psychologically resonant moments and gestures that endow this release with its outsized power. But this music has no mind of its own – which is where we come in. From dystopian minimalism to space force flight Müller has created a singular sonic realm, and put us at its center. However hesitantly, we move toward the fulfillment of his design. Subtly affecting in its conveyance of indefinite perceptions, Melt holds its own in a rare sound space for contemplation.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 18 April 2023

Subclavian: I

Subclavian: I
Released: 22 March 2024
phobos.bandcamp.com

Most Spacemusic comes from a synthesizer. David Thompson‘s Subclavian I (63:56) comes from his heart. Recording here under the name Subclavian (and elsewhere as Phobos) this UK synthesist now presents three monumental movements of Berlin-School based music. Propelled by machine dreams and nocturnal imaginings his new endeavor ponders the promise of the future and our perpetual becoming across time. While the technology has changed the impulses have not. Each realization points to principles greater than itself, as it takes the listener on a lone outward journey of the mind. Arising from the desolate end of his keyboards Thompson issues a rapt midnight of lush harmony and expressive melodies, which pervades the balance of repeating sequencer notes and expressive synth lead lines – all beneath an alien atmosphere of sustaining tensions and spare textures. A variety of instrumental timbres support a progression of cool chords and convergences. Rhythm simply extends harmonic relationships into longer periods of time and bestows motion on those sectors of sonic mirage. Amidst the metronomical tempo and echoing patterns we will enjoy a deep zone mind melt – that is once we surrender to this wonderful cosmos of electronic sound and so absorb the rich experience this album offers. Subclavian I keeps alive not only the sounds and textures of the giants of the 1970s Kosmische Musik generation, but also the forward-thinking values known uniquely to this era. There is an undeniable passion here that comes through – rare in a genre that too often feels rote.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 11 April 2024

Robert Rich: Numena

Robert Rich: Numena
Released: 15 April 1987
www.robertrich.com

Prior to the initial issuing of Numena (51:05) on LP by Multimood Records in 1987, Robert Rich was known primarily for his all-night sleep concerts and slow motion drone cassettes. Rich took his music a step forward on this vinyl debut by placing an emphasis on the textures, atmospheres and possibilities derived from a wider range of instruments. Announcing a new area of creative expansion we find Numena to be richly imagined. There is something elevated about its quiet reverence for the world around us. While previously Rich’s minimal work required a specialized mode of listening, Numena could be understood on other levels, yet still managed to retain many elements of hypnotic energy. With a more melodic and rhythmically complex approach he crafts four distinct journeys through purified realms of experience. Into this wilderness of sound we are welcomed by the side-long The Other Side of Twilight. A dream of ancient rites, modern omens and extant hope, here Rich puts forth a magical, mystical sequencer run building and receding beneath slowly sweeping synth pads and deep electronic tones. Once through the semi-darkness the remaining three tracks each open up and explore their own mythic sonic space. With it diffuse sustaining notes, primal percussion and reverberant field recordings this album side introduces harmonic structures in Just Intonation. Flutes blown whisper soft, or layered with additional harmonics, the resulting emanation is strange and wonderful – evoking the metaphysical dimensions within the player. Weaving a connection between human cultures both past and present these works feel as if part of some secret ceremony – evoking an ethereal doorway into mind and mood. Numena is a singular act of artistic imagination. It contains light, which illuminates a path, and remains meaningful to all who seek it out – still vibrant and pulsing with quiet energy in any age.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 28 March 2024

Earthroom: Heuristic Environments

Earthroom: Heuristic Environments
Released: 27 February 2024
www.mysterycircles.com

Settling into the gentle gravity of the Ambient Chamber Music genre the duo Earthroom realize work within the measured motion of atmosphere and mood. Musicians Tyler Pursel and Morgan Evans-Weiler manage to both haunt and illuminate your psyche. Their Heuristic Environments (42:54) navigates the aural ether slowly and with care. The eleven idyllic compositions here are remarkable achievements of the imagination – pleasing to the ear and quieting to the mind. Sedated woodwinds, violin and piano notes wander and roam among breathing washes of warm chords and artful, dreamy samples. Moving from reasoned ambient blurs and fragmented found sounds to a conjunction of cogitating circuits and crackling patch cords Heuristic Environments is an album meant, not for the masses of the mainstream, but for the loyal royal listeners of our realm. Multi-layered and lulling its conscious and subconscious perspectives expects an otherworldly reach of the imagination. We, the subsided, absorb Earthroom’s interludes of lightness and insistence awash in their quiet, subtle details and puzzling philosophical possibilities. Yet, even in this chilly blankness each creation methodically resolves into a vivid state of wordless quietude – providing a pleasant encounter impossible to overthink. From abstraction to consonance by way of such strange vibrational rituals Heuristic Environments is so exquisitely balanced that one scarcely notices its separate elements. The music flickers briefly alive, shares its private melody and moody tone, then vanishes. Teeming with reassuring harmonic shades and hues Pursel & Evans-Weiler present a profound and intimate sonic statement. Those of us attending this album will know our own brilliance by recognizing theirs.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 21 March 2024

Jonn Serrie: Ascendant Destiny

Jonn Serrie: Ascendant Destiny
Released: 23 February 2024
www.newworldmusic.com

Looking back down the decades it is easy to see the many contributions that Jonn Serrie has made to our Spacemusic lives and times. But for all this rich past history what his music still does best is consistently conjure an eternal now. Ascendant Destiny (57:33) is another deep zone mind melt of an album. Across six elegantly airborne synthesizer symmetries his work plays tenderly, yet feels massive. Such long-ripened electronic skills become apparent in these atmospheric achievements of purity and peace. Done with artistry and flair Ascendant Destiny offers a myriad of boundaryless New Age Ambient moments. In the slow surge of synth sounds its meaning becomes charged. Exerting their mesmerizing pull strings sustain as, moving in chord motion, harmony and ambiance interplay to great effect. Softly sounding in quiet joy there is something elevated in Serrie’s production of textures and timbres. A steady consonance grounds our cosmic journey – beneath the imaginatively detailed aural glow surrounding each track. Unfolding easily in the otherworldly brilliance of ethereal tones and lulling strains, while further in darkening down into dense rumbling drones Ascendant Destiny glides in ascending spirals, then fades away – almost reluctant to ever end. Regarding the nature of a realm so fluid and shifting that often within the psyche the real and unreal will merge, we may dream of a wondrous beckoning from beyond. The spaciousness, the timeless quality, how it places us in any universal realm is quite captivating – and leaves the listener wanting only to more explore this idyllic domain.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 14 March 2024

Wil Bolton: Null Point

Wil Bolton: Null Point
Released: 8 February 2024
www.theslowmusicmovement.org

Innovative music is not a structured movement. With its mixed frequencies and fantasies of the future such makers demonstrate a sense of a marvelous particularity each time they enrich the living world with one of their works. Null Point (41:08) by Wil Bolton is an affecting release, in possession of a depth which its title will not betray. Its six iterations of exceptional intentional aural intrigue truly put the “mental” in the word experimental. With its soft periphery surrounding a firm core Bolton realizes a music where the center does not matter more than whatever is out at the edge. Thinking about the nature of aural experience over the derivations of sonic traditions he achieves something new – something more than the scantly schematic – and brings into being an elevated and elated Electronic Music. Ranging from the rounded and consonant to the brittle and bleak Bolton’s sound sources emerge in disguise. Building and shaping, his tracks breathe, bloom and sigh, then turn to unexpected textures and tones – leaving behind nothing other than a cloudy contemplation of complexity. From the vaporous, melodious rhythms and spacey ensemble pads, to its meanings at the fringes of perception this album conjures an uncommon condition of cool. The softer it falls, the longer we dwell upon it, the deeper it reaches into our listening minds. In the reluctant grey light of pre-dawn, or among its subdued ghosts dancing to discreet beats amidst a pattering pulse Null Point thoroughly exults in just being present for its fleeting moments of life.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 7 March 2023

Ian Boddy: Modal Operandi

Ian Boddy: Modal Operandi
Released: 28 February 2024
www.quietdetails.com

You may have to dream your way into Ian Boddy‘s domain of shadows. His Modal Operandi (47:08) presents seven think pieces of fascinatingly strange and abstract quality. Defined by their wide-ranging sound and unexpected innovatory precision, we find Boddy’s achievements to be technical as well as artistic. His work here connects directly to the true function of thought, heading somewhere safely outside conventional commercial preoccupations – and straight on to the realm of the mind. Escaping the electronic lair we rise to float upon a layered harmonic haze. As tones crawl out from underground the consuming furnace of creativity rumbles and booms. Emphatic vertical lines imbued with a magnitude of doom synths produce a feverish frisson. Dramatic in an ambient way everything on Modal Operandi is effected profoundly by the subtlest of gesture, communicating to the listener in its exclusive sonic language. Even though breathing textures configure clouds of complex concepts, we will always be able to hear the signal within the noise. While modular circuits are humming, thrumming and glowing, amidst such grinding smooth oscillators we must remember to seek the human aspects of this album – all that its wires, metal and PCBs cannot realize on their own. Carried by pure imagination Modal Operandi reveals beauty for its own sake – and asks our world to expand to accommodate its meaningful message.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 29 February 2023

K Markov: Dark Energy I & II

K Markov: Dark Energy I & II
Released: 15 January 2024 & 12 February 2024
kmarkov.bandcamp.com

While each genre has its own themes, tropes and imagery the basic human point of Electronic Music is self-revelation. Expressing oneself by shaping timbre, the very fabric of sound, may be the most direct route to the galaxy inside. Throughout a range of works K Markov displays remarkable growth. His Dark Energy I (71:57) and Dark Energy II (69:53) seem to interrogate The Universe itself. Across 8 tracks total the music rises and falls, lightens and darkens, exists and flows without any regard to Earthly factors. Somewhere in the glimmer of the imaginative spirit modulated effects emerge, open and wither – inviting us down into churning tones and alien drones of dungeon synths and the starless regions of space. Textured and corroded, then inward-facing and soft Dark Energy I & II offer an electrifying immediacy of excited circuits chilled in stalled zones of oppressive nothingness. Between the abstract tones and curious currents the awakening of the mind becomes this music’s most meaningful source of truth. Markov’s engineering murmurs of empty space, and suggests surreal apparitions and night thoughts better hidden until daybreak. Being exposed to such challenges ultimately widens and expands our definition of what beauty is. This process can feel uncomfortable, but for the more open-minded there is some immeasurable factor that steadily pulls us in. All of us need more of this in our lives. And musicians such as K Markov are a gateway to finding it – not with conventional consonant arrangements, but with his innovative explorations of dreamy atmospheres and negative space. To have a meaningful experience, we will have to listen differently – using a different part of the brain if we are to attend and engage with the music itself.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 22 February 2024

Steve Roach/Robert Rich: Waves of Now

Steve Roach/Robert Rich: Waves of Now
Released: 19 January 2024
www.steveroach.com
www.robertrich.com

After 30 years apart, on 5 December 2023 Steve Roach & Robert Rich resumed their fascinating alliance at the Club Congress in Tuscon, Arizona – an event that was recorded live and produced into their album Waves of Now (124:28). Connected to the two previous Roach/Rich collaborations, Strata (1990) and Soma (1992) Waves of Now feels as if sound has materialized out of memory. This dream of a work drifts its way through an intriguing soundscape of breathy flutes, serpentine steel guitar, resounding piano notes and an alternating current of synthesized harmony and rapturous electronic forms. Free-flowing in structure and featuring a range of contrasted states, colors and tonality Waves of Now is so enveloping that you may want to heighten its impact by closing your eyes. The 16 tracks run from live versions of studio works and solo expressions to in-the-moment collaborations where signature sounds of one musician are elevated and enhanced by the other – converted into something fascinatingly different from the original, while remaining hauntingly familiar. From soft moonlit chords and floating synth atmospheres, to kinetic percussion loops and electro-groove curvets this work extends all the way to the horizon, yet still manages to offer many fine details. Driven by the mental meter of cerebral scales a forward momentum meets molten motoring synth arpeggios as sequencers echo out into monumental proportions. Beyond the heated sonic rush this duo also conjures up cooler moods. From each zone arises a distinctive intensity, showing an expertly guided energy arcing magically from beginning to end. Pleasingly inventive, ethereal and illuminating, the electrifying immediacy felt throughout Waves of Now points to endless future possibilities. This kind of live music is an art in the making. Each of its new complexes of sound is an elaborate expression in the poetics of the present. The liminal realm realized during this long-awaited concert hints at the infinite. But Roach & Rich find it necessary to bring an audience with them as they navigate interior landscapes – asking their listeners to please stop reacting to the outer world for a spell, and spend some time experiencing that which may be found within.

Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 8 February 2024