SURFACE 10 
538634
CD
SURFACE 10 (SYNTH STUNNER-STYLE:EDGAR FROESE)

CLASSIC (SYNTH)

Calling all Tangerine Dream / Edgar Froese fans – This is for YOU! It is the debut album from the group that produced the incredibly brilliant version of 'Phaedra' on the first Tangerine Dream tribute album; 'Tangerine Ambience' - This album is just as superb and more – A most incredible ‘Ambient’-‘Synth’ crossover album that treads a wide path but manages to avoid the dance areas. It is without doubt a stunning debut release that starts off firmly in early to mid-period Tangerine Dream territory and slowly develops and evolves into an altogether more 90's approach to the same sound, constantly holding your attention as it goes. As with other new 90’s bands like Radio Massacre International, we feel we discovered another gem in the shape of Surface 10. This 9 track CD spans a massive seventy-seven minutes playing time, and it’s already a most treasured possession to a lot of synth music fans from all areas of the genre, so if you don’t have it, don’t miss-out - Order it today – You won’t regret it! Want to know more first? – Then read on…

The album begins with ‘The Rim’, where a series of quite bouncy rhythms, a rumbling undercurrent of electronic bass and gradually adds more layers as it goes, including the ubiquitous sweeping chords, other rhythm parts and drums/percussion, threatening to turn into a more trancey style, but ending up by the six-minute mark as sounding more like Tangerine Dream's ‘Dream Mixes’ type of stuff, only one hell of a lot better! Actual melody lines fly away over the multi-rhythmic, sequencer filled base, and as it heads on to hit the ten minute area it fades into a short space music style finale, giving the track an altogether epic cosmic feel. It then crosses over into dark, ethereal ‘Blade Runner’ style territory, complete with sampled rainfall backdrop for the shorter ‘Moment’, which then segues into the sixteen-minute minute ‘137 Lost’, whereupon the ‘ethereal’ turns into ‘space’ and becomes totally enthralling. A lush set of haunting string-synths join throngs of distant swooping sounds from passing asteroids and electronics that seem to bubble up from nowhere, then disappear just as swiftly, all over a slowly shifting space music foundation. Just after the four-minute point, a distant, almost sequencer style rhythm evolves and the composition takes on a new shape, with the rhythm, soaring synth backdrop and a mid-range booming foreground effect. As the pace accelerates slightly, more up-front sounds are introduced, almost melodic but, still impressively atmospheric, with the pattern and textures changing shape within its set framework for a magical sixteen minute, sequencer riddled electronic journey that is set firmly in the realms of Tangerine Dream's 'Phaedra' & 'Rubycon' tracks. As you reach this stage of the album you may well be experiencing a feeling whereby you are asking yourself; is this is how 90's Tangerine Dream music should really sound?!?! ‘Shapeless Fiend’ starts off with sampled voices and soft sound textures, but leads into one massive symphonic slice of combined drums and synthesizers that has strength, depth, dynamics, melody, emotion, electronic effects and more, all on one very inventive slice of eastern-tinged musical elegance that comes in at just under eight minutes long. ‘Vectoring’ is very different, as a storming, but not mind-numbing trance rhythm layer rolls in, with fast sequencers riding over ebbing and flowing synth layers and Mellotron sounds with unusual alien voices sampled on top of the thumping drum base - All totally hypnotic and it works really well, particularly with a spacey melody line appearing half way through the high speed musical train ride that you're on. By the four-minute mark, any dance connotations have been lost, as a steaming guitar solo flies in out of nowhere and the whole track changes into a powerful passage where dynamic synths and guitar battle it out over a solid rhythmic backdrop. Eventually it returns to the original format for a few seconds before the whole lot combines toward the exciting final section, which ends at just over nine-minutes on a full-sounding slice of non-rhythmic space music which slowly fades off into the distance. ‘Light Without Reflection’ is another exquisite space voyage with layers of keyboards and more combining to create a very deep set of musical atmospheres with only a distant drum pattern appearing around the eight-minute mark to add a sense of real depth to the booming bass synths and gorgeous top layers. After nine minutes, the bass layers begin to dominate, and the track moves into a magnificent symphonic passage that is still in space music territory, but with a huge canopy of sound so rarely achieved by anyone in the genre. This fantastic set of soundscapes continues on past the seventeen-minute point, by which time it fades quickly and runs into the beginning of track 7. ‘Concentrations’ states its case immediately with a streaming set of top layers (unfair to call them melodies although it is melodic in sound) running over an undercurrent of choppy drum rhythms and space effects. Occasional distant voices and electronic samples emerge, but through all the layers, it is the foreground keyboards that dominate, while evolving into a very beautiful passage that seems at odds with itself at first, but you warm to it very quickly and realise that it really is fine music, again very atmospheric, emotional and extremely well constructed. ‘Faith ~1’ opens with voice samples and then a deep space synth heralds the arrival of a bass rhythm with a percussive backdrop, and then the track takes off on a wave of cascading sequencers, more electric guitar and the ever present synth layers that fill out the sound - Quite a biting little number that features a variety of interesting soundscapes along its five-minute synth-rock path. Finally, ‘Waveline’ ends the album with just over two minutes of pure cosmic bliss, ending a most incredible ‘Ambient’/‘Synth’ crossover album in beautiful style.

Weight: 150.00 g