Across time & space: The Thread by Russell Maliphant and Vangelis

All stills are from the trailer of The Thread

The Sadler's Wells dance production The Thread has set out, with its central concept of the mythological thread, to explore "changing forms of traditional Greek dance" via the choreography of Russell Maliphant and the music composed especially for this production by Vangelis.

Such opus then needed a composer who could seamlessly move between, and even combine, ancient and modern, demolishing any boundaries in our perceptions of what musical elements are supposed to be rooted in what frame of time and space.

If one needed another demonstration of how Vangelis is able to compose music that transcends many historic periods' and geographic areas' musical tradition, then the score for The Thread is certainly one.

Naturally, in the introduction to the video presentation that premiered on 17 April 2020, his soundtracks for Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire got a mention, but here we are in a musical world that is more familiar to those who know his extensive and impossibly multi-faceted discography, which spans a seemingly absurd range of genres and styles.

The video is based on the world premiere, which took place in spring 2019 - and it was streamed, then later made available for one week on the dance company's Youtube channel.

The opening, with its drone, its subdued percussive sounds, and evolving ancient-but-futuristic sounding melodic motifs reminds us of the overture to his El Greco studio album (not the soundtrack of same title).

This, and some other sections of the score, are reaching a level of pure beauty that is often hard to process even without the imagery. A few notes from the by-now characteristic and instantly recognisable harp-like synthesizer sounds Vangelis used in the soundtrack to the epic movie Alexander can conjure a sense of immense serenity, timeless beauty - and the dancers seem to be floating on the sound waves...

The lighting design adds to the superlative choreography by Russell Maliphant: the lights create virtual spaces, sometimes splitting up the dancers into separate scenes, producing ever-changing staging of the movements. During the meditative third section of the score, the lighting design and the camerawork create something that is an audiovisual bliss - its purity and simplicity is mesmerising.

In other sections of the score, Vangelis makes us feel as if Mother Earth is pulsating with some ancient rhythm, menacing at times, animating and life-affirming at other times. If we recall Asma Asmaton from the album Rapsodies, well, those very pulsations seem to be now emerging from some unimaginably deep geological structure buried under the stage... and they reverberate outward, after animating the dancers, with the waves dying off somewhere at the peripheries of our known Universe...

This is what it means to think in sounds, not in genres, not in styles, not in preconceived boundaries of time and space.

Sampled whirls of sounds, ancient woodwinds, organic woodwinds of long gone millennia, and Earth-shattering percussion are all coming together in the ballet's most animated sections. However, after every unleashing of thundering forces, we have a chance to recompose ourselves.

The emotional effect of going from Alexander-like percussive passages to the serenity of achingly beautiful harmonies (which remind us of the unique musical world of the albums Odes and Rapsodies) is similar to a feeling of gently dissolving in some caressing wash of sound waves.

The range of the musical concept is, simply put, phenomenal.

We go from minimalist, completely stripped-down elements to towering sonic constructs, from the sound of some ancient gathering in immemorable times to Byzantine celebrations of life forces to somewhere in the outer realms of the Cosmos.

Is it the sound of an ancient army gathering or just a distant fete in some settlement impossibly far from us in space and time?

Are those drums or are those tectonic plates colliding, volcanic forces throbbing under them?

Is that a synthesizer, a sampled and processed ancient instrument, or an ethnic acoustic instrument that we listen to through some immersive voyage in a time machine?

Are those ancient flutes' sound reaching us through some labyrinth of caves, which managed to hide from us for millennia? Or is that some imaginative use of state of the art electronics?

Does it matter?

Vangelis has always said, and this is why people classifying him as an electronic artist are consistently wrong:  he does not care where the sounds come from. Due to the possibilities of technology, he just happens to utilise many electronic instruments to achieve the sound colours he imagines.

The Thread is, and remains, another perfect example of that ethos...


Credits: Artistic conception from Georgia Iliopoulou; lighting by fellow Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist, the “choreographer of light”, Michael Hulls; costume design by award-winning London-based Greek fashion designer, Mary Katrantzou.

Magic Moments At Twilight Time - Creavolution Reborn

The Music & Elsewhere label has been a veritable force in underground music for some decades now, and its recent 25-year anniversary compilation was covered on this blog, too, not so long ago.

An historic detail is that the label, prior to it having been opened up to underground music spanning four continents, was established initially to release the albums of Magic Moments At Twilight Time.

Latter project began its life as Mick Magic's solo project in 1986, then later it was gradually expanded to what was called tongue-in-cheek "a husband and wife duo from north west Surrey", and eventually the headcount grew to four.

They produced a dozen albums, and Creavolution, originally recorded between 1994 and 1995, became the band’s biggest selling title.

As the original DAT masters were still playable, under the TMR Records re-release program the material was transferred to 64 bit digital audio at Brain Dead Studios, subsequently bounced on to reel-to-reel tape for a genuine analogue remaster. EMI's London CD pressing plant has then made it see the light of day as Creavolution Reborn.

As the press release accurately puts it, the album is quite "a mix of Hawkwind meets Blondie, then throw in Giorgio Moroder synths, Clannad harmonies, a touch of flamenco, gothic hints, an operatic baritone and have fun with rock & roll".

Both the opening and closing (bonus) tracks are ear candies for the fans of space rock, with a perfect blend of electronic atmospheres introducing the energetic compositions.

The tight Moroder-esque synth patterns and electronic effects we can hear on Starship Psychotron have delicate vocals acting as counterpoint, and the combination makes the composition quite ethereal.

That eminently space rock-era beauty can be heard in The Night Fantasia, too, with always-changing analogue synth sound alchemy and the catchy, very melodic and almost celestial-sounding vocals.

Driving rhythms with energetic riffs and processed vocals on Kronophobia can take us into almost anthemic rock territory, too.

Equally well one can mention, in this far from exhaustive analysis, the track Spirit Electric - atmospheric electronic drone gives first an almost early music feel, taking us back to early Renaissance times.

This time travel is much helped by the almost whispering vocals and melodic guitars - and then, just to show off the range on the album, the track can equally effortlessly fly off into a tighter and propelling rock realm, too.

This juxtaposition of the futuristic, the here-and-now, and the musical time travel into the world of classic rock harmonies with impossible to ignore rhythms is also exemplified by tracks like Purple Eyed & Mystified.

The CD is available for only £5 including P&P in the UK (with free CD for initial copies!). The additional P&P costs for Europe: + £3.85,  USA: + £4.85 P&P. Payable in Sterling (£) any method you wish! Paypal, Bank Transfer, Cheque, P.O. or even cash.

Collection is available from the studio by appointment if you are in the London area! Full details & to order: marcbell386@btinternet.com.

A subtle but epic journey: Ourdom by Solar Fields

It is safe to say that by now one can firmly expect Solar Fields albums to have impeccable production, delicate care taken in sound design, subtle details in the mix and no self-indulgent technological showing off.

Ourdom, the very recent release by Magnus Birgersson aka Solar Fields is no exception - but apart from the polished technical elements, the musical aspects of the just-under 80-minutes-long album don't let expecting fans down either.

In today's collapsing attention span, shrinking to almost a singularity, it is quite uplifting to see an artist trusting us with well-structured, seamlessly flowing long pieces in the vein of the epics by Klaus Schulze.

Burning View, the album's opening track, is gently introducing the epic musical adventure with a floating ambience and subtle sonic ornaments. The gradual transition to solemn piano chords in Shifting Nature, then to the anthemic uplift of Into The Sun is a typical and very satisfying Solar Fields construct.

One can fully expect to be gradually taken to climaxes like Mountain King and Moving Lines, which are high-octane, but perfectly economically done EDM pieces with imaginative changes and variations.

Tracks like Wave Cascade provide a repose and a chance for introspection between the energetic currents of the aforementioned tracks, and Ourdom is very capable of shifting us between inner states as it does so with musical epochs, too...

Joshua's Shop with its ascending playful notes is taking us from electronic ambiences to a classical period, when the first glassy harp-like notes appear... As a delicate, nostalgic and exquisitely economic piece, it again shows how sound design, musical elements and thinking in structures can produce a concise and evocative sonic picture.

If one was not convinced by the range of imaginings heard so far, then A Green Walk and Parallel Universe can show us how eminently ambient atmospherics and spacey harmonies can fit in with the more soaring and driven passages of the album.

One can appreciate in some perfectly put-together long mixes the way in which different moods and tempos can be combined into a whole sonic journey, the mix becoming greater than the sum of its parts.

However, to state the obvious, here we have original material composed of 13 tracks, each seemingly conceived to be organic parts of the greater unit: just inspect closely the subtle way in which musical elements of a track can reference other sections they build up from or dissolve into...

It is a rare treat, and in a rushing world it is perhaps outrageous to strongly emphasise that Ourdom is best enjoyed, due to above reasons, as a single musical journey - and not track by track. Having said that, each track perfectly functions on its own, and, again, in typical Solar Fields fashion, each is a little electronic gem.

The album flows and connects very distant moods, from pure atmospherics to playful melodies to energetic motions, but the transitions are never with harsh edges...

On Ourdom, there are no right angles nor sharp edges, only ascending and descending waves and curves...

Return to purity

The superlative multi-instrumentalist, who defined a whole era with his first album Tubular Bells, has returned.

Now this may sound bizarre, as Mike Oldfield has been quite active and very much "around" in recent years.

Disregard the cover design. Disregard the direct reference to Ommadawn, his third album more than four decades ago.

The new album is actually a return to an instrumental purity of utterly delicate nature, rather than just a revisiting of some older material. It is not a remix, it is not a re-take on the themes and motifs of that mid-seventies concept album.

After (too) many years of bizarrely ultra-commercial and self-conscious dance electronica (true, infused with immediately recognisable Oldfield magic, but still...), the prog rock legend has put aside the multitudes of software plugins and drum machines and hyper-digital shake-your-booty sequenced nightclub material.

What we have on the two long instrumental tracks (as another kind of return, one of form and structure, from decades and decades ago) is the eminently guitar-oriented, ethnically inspired, never just showing off virtuoso Oldfield.

It really is a return to the sound world of his first albums, with a subtlety and instrumental dexterity that is remarkable for the artist who is no longer in his early twenties, to say the least.

What makes this album stand out in the over-digitised, over-produced, ultra-self-conscious and in-your-face musical world of the second decade of this very different century is how organic it is.

Yes, it is impeccably produced, it is a product of state-of-the-art studio technology - but this remains, as this should be, just a background element in what we are listening to.

This is Mike Oldfield we have not heard since the 1970s, but in the best possible sense.

The intricate guitar motifs, the folk influences, the catchy melodic snippets that combine and develop beyond what one may expect even with full knowledge of his musical output, the superlative care for details (while still keeping it sounding utterly natural and improvised even)... this is the most astonishing Oldfield we can imagine. If we are fans of his organic, spontaneous-sounding instrumental output, that is...

Return to Ommadawn surprises with its purity, a purity of sound, but also a purity of inspiration.

The simplicity, which is the most difficult thing in music, and the intimacy of the two tracks is something that many instrumentalists should really, truly, take as lessons of musicianship.

Peter Baumann's Machines of Desire

Perhaps not quite literally after decades of absence (as he has produced and collaborated on some albums in recent years), Peter Baumann returned with a solo album. For Tangerine Dream afficionados, it really was a several decades-long pause.

Machines of Desire (with a perhaps unintentional hint of a classic Ray Bradbury tale's title, The Machineries of Joy) is a surprising affair.

Above all, it is an honest album on which Baumann has kept to his individual voice, without drifting (or downright flying) into current mainstream electronica - as Chris Franke and Edgar Froese have done in recent (but quite numerous) years.

It is a Peter Baumann album - not a dancey Baumann-esque album, not a Tangerine Dream-esque trip down memory lane, not electronic nostalgia and not a nod to populist electronic genres.

Much darker than the few Peter Baumann solo albums' material, much more cohesive in mood and structure, it really has the melodic and dramatic developments that sound familiar from his early solo albums. In this sense, after quite some decades, he seems to keep a remarkably stable voice and style.

Also, while it has sonorities and particular synth patches matching exactly some sounds heard on the by now vintage Transharmonic Nights, it is a contemporary album.

Tangerine Dream fans will recognise (especially on the second track, Searching in Vain) the characteristic, almost trademark, sounds of the PPG Wave and the familiar sequencer patterns. In some ways, this track is the most direct reference to the TD years.

The rhythms and melodies have that catchy Baumann signature, deceptively simple motifs that stay in one's head for a long time, without being cheesy or too playful (as in some of his early solo material).

There are processed choirs, vocoders reminiscent of parts of the ultra-rare The Keep soundtrack (the third track will jog our memory), precise sequencer and drum machine parts.

His orchestrations are refreshing in the current electronic mass production. Fast rotary speaker-altered pianos (remember Rubycon and Phaedra?) with vintage vocoders and mellotrons sit very comfortably with dark, state-of-the-art synthesized textures and organic woodwinds.

It is experimenting more bravely than some of its predecessors (not that there were many Baumann albums to refer to in this sense) - some of the darker and atmospheric parts from Transharmonic Nights stage a return in terms of mood, for example the opening track (The Blue Dream) and Echoes in the Cave.

Ordinary Wonder is perhaps the most surprisingly Transharmonic Nights-sounding track. Its melody, its playfulness, and even the synth patches remind one of that 1979 little gem. The ominous development and tense sequencers are a splendid little treat almost in the very middle of the album.

Overall, while the album may not at all be a 'wonder' in the current landscape of electronic albums, it is not an ordinary one at all.

Going back to the earlier point, it is a neat LP-length sonic package... Don't expect to be rocked to your foundation by it, but while satisfying our nostalgia of the perhaps golden era of Tangerine Dream albums, it is bringing a still fresh and bravely experimental Peter Baumann into our living room. Or wherever one may be listening to Machines of Desire...

Frankly, one was not expecting this degree of integrity from an electronic musician staging a comeback - but there we have it, instead of embarking on a forced-sounding and, as in the case of some continuously active big names like Jarre, near-desperate riding of the waves of current mainstream electronica... we have a genuine through-and-through Peter Baumann album in 2016.

A third breath of Oxygene

The third installment of what has become by now the Oxygene trilogy was released on 2 December.

What made the first Oxygene enduring and extraordinary, even to ears coming across its fluid soundscapes 40 years later, was the fact that in many ways it placed itself outside the language of, albeit early, mainstream electronic music. It was eminently different with its other-wordly, yet accessible, soundscapes and fluid, bubbling, ever-changing structures.

Oxygene 2 was somewhat different, with synth-pop and dance music inflections. The third album cannot escape the compulsion of delving into utterly mainstream and utterly popular sub-genres of electronica.

Its opening is surprising, and surprisingly pleasing, with its scintillating sonic fragments and melodic elements that pop in and out of the sound stage.

The phased vintage string machine pads are present in various places in the album, vintage white noise sweeps and percussion elements, and even the instantly recognizable Elka Synthex (which made Rendez-Vous so magnificent sounding) makes an appearance a few times.

There is pleasing amount of experimentation, there are tracks that sound as if arpeggiators' patterns were chopped randomly to pieces and the melodic fragments bubble up unpredictably from the depth of closing and opening filters.

However, the predictable appearance of in-your-face electronic dance music tracks are quite jarring again. The lush soundscapes being suspended by trendy thumping of not only predictable, but terribly banal and already over-used, beat patterns is not exactly a positive effect. There is Jarre inventiveness at work, but the cliched drum patterns are just too... cliched to ignore.

As with Oxygene 2, the complete changes in mood and direction with much too ordinary dancey interludes manage to utterly ruin the otherwise cohesive flow of the album.

The changes in dynamics and effervescence is not a problem, even the first album had its gear shifts that were perfectly blended with the other tracks - but it would be great to hear any intriguing or innovative spins on mainstream electronica, instead the very tired deja-entendu patterns.

As someone remarked about the deplorable Theo & Thea album some years ago, it would be good to leave the forays into dance electronica to those who do it best - and with innovative ideas.

Otherwise, if we discount the jarring (and unfortunately jarringly banal) outings into EDM territory, Oxygene 3 is again quite a remarkable achievement with eminently state-of-the-art technology behind it.

It is quite endearing, that Jarre in 2016 can still stay fresh and full of ideas, and we tend to take for granted the not everyday feast of being able to keep up to speed with the exponential increase (and at extremely fast pace) of electronic sound producing software and hardware.

It sets an example to many electronic musicians who not only get stuck in their ways, but even start out with genre cliches and are are completely in the grips of the technology that they choose to use.

Imaginative, ever-changing, fluid and surprising in many places - Oxygen 3 delivers. If only we could somehow make abstraction of the intrusions of off-the-shelf EDM sonorities that pop up in a few places...

Back in full, but gentle, force

Photo: Wing Shya, 2015

Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of the unquantifiable living giants of music, stated just over two years ago that he has to withdraw from his numerous projects due to a throat cancer diagnosis.

In a characteristically humble manner, he was even apologizing to his fans for taking the "unavoidable decision" without being able to state a time frame for his return.

Last year came the superb news, that Sakamoto-san is feeling great and looking forward to returning to work.

The grand Master of infinitely subtle, gentle, but all the more poignant harmonies was back in full force.

His latest project, soon to be released via Milan Records (but already freely streamable), shows that Sakamoto-san is still very much at the dizzying heights of his creative, and above all, expressive force.

His soundtrack for Nagasaki: Memories Of My Son is breathtakingly poignant and emotional in the unique Sakamoto way... It is not a vast orchestral drama, it is not a wall-to-wall sentimental journey.

Instead, the exquisitely delicate, fragile, minimalist patterns, the incredibly restrained subtle orchestrations make it into a maximally powerful emotional journey.

The 28 short tracks to be released on the album are a series of gems that work on their own, too, and take us from the ethereal piano minimalism of How Are You? to the powerfully economical orchestral chords of Human-Induced Tragedy. 

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" said Leonardo da Vinci once... and Ryuichi Sakamoto is, once again, at his most sophisticated in the perfectly distilled apparent simplicity of these tiny pieces.

How can one create such imagery and subtle beauty with a few woodwind notes in Raindrops... or such deep sense of despair without any over-dramatisation in Giving Up ?

Sakamoto-san is truly back, in full force, but a force of such gentleness and of such delicate beauty, that one has to hope this is just one of many more musical journeys he will take us in coming years. 

Jean Michel Jarre - Electronica Vol. 2

The second installment of Jean-Michel Jarre's major collaborative project has freshly been released on 6 May, and it follows the volume entitled Time Machine.

Perhaps it is a sacrilege to start with a review of the second volume, but personally, not only it feels more cohesive than the first, but also, it brings back a certain majestic feel that he, and very few other, practitioners of electronic music have managed to infuse their compositions with. 

The list of collaborators is, once again, large and illustrious: from Gary Numan to Hans Zimmer to The Orb, there are many legendary names on the track listing.

The flow of this album, from its rather beautiful and economic opening theme right to its reprise heard in the final track, is perhaps much more heroic and even anthemic than the rather caleidoscope-like first volume. 

This is by no means an exhaustive track-by-track review, but one has to pick out a number of tracks to illustrate the span of the material on the album...

There are of course incursions into very strong, driving, and at the same time rather dark, rhythms, too. Exit, featuring Edward Snowden's poignant monologue, is a good example where the very fast-paced electronic background would serve as a perfect soundtrack to a high-octane video illustrating the octets of internet traffic circulating in the myriad network fibres...

However, when one would expect some typical electro-pop when looking at the collaborators listed on some tracks, the surprises keep coming.

Brick England (feat. The Pet Shop Boys) is, with all its lighter tone after the anthemic album intros, a perfect blend of softly melancholic vocal lines and more animated electronics, the tension between the two working superbly. 

Swipe To The Right (feat. Cyndi Lauper) is, again, by no means an '80s or '90s synth-pop tune... Surprisingly, it is rather darker and keeps the album's overall (in a good sense) heroic thrust. What perhaps surprised one the most was the sudden emergence, at the very end of the track, of phased vintage strings and electronic percussion patterns typical of Oxygene.

In the somewhat expected to be "heavier" and darker register, we are not let down... Here For You (feat. Gary Numan) is an instant classic, with Numan's soaring vocals and the almost ode-like electronic backing making yet another very memorable track that would have worked perfectly on any, at the same time dark and uplifting, Numan albums, too.

Why This, Why That and Why? (feat. Yello) takes us to the realms of existentialist meditation, along the lines of what one may have experienced emotionally when listening to Daft Punk's Touch (from Random Access Memories), Here, too, the text, the vocal quality and the electronic atmospherics underpinning the monologue work extremely well for a mood piece.

A purely, in a way ambiental, mood piece of soundscapes and voices, bringing hommage to the electronic instrument creators Leon Theremin and Bob Moog, is the Switch on Leon (feat. The Orb). These Creatures (feat. Julia Holter) starts with a sonic surprise, when for a few seconds of her vocals we may think we landed in Laurie Anderson's O Superman... but the track evolves rapidly into a blend of crystalline vocals by Julia and gentle electronics in the background

There is even a pinch of Hollywood greatness here... Electrees (feat. Hans Zimmer) is far from some  mere snippet of symphonic soundtrack, though. Admittedly a pleasant surprise is not only the structurally well-rounded short track that can take the listener through a number of emotional levels, but so is the absence of minimalist string patterns one may have expected. Instead, it is a lush piece with patterns actually coming from the very electronic-sounding sequencer voices, giving nice counterpoint to the very organic (incl. choral) lead lines.

The final two tracks return to "pure" Jarre, in the sense of them not listing collaborators or co-composers, and nicely round off the album material with a reprise of the opening theme, too. 

Overall, a very noteworthy outing that follows Electronica Vol. 1 - with the upcoming tours featuring material from these two albums, too, it will be interesting to see how the collaborative pieces are presented in concert settings (without the featured musicians).