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review by Dene Bebbington Chris has dabbled with some electronic music on his Ayurveda and Scanning Planet 3 albums, now he's gone the whole hog and created a completely electronic album with Contact Light which features extensive sounds of a theremin and was recorded live without multi-tracking. An interesting piece of trivia is that the title refers to the first words a human said on the moon when the light came on indicating something under the Eagle's feet. Often Contact Light verges on the experimental as one wonders if Chris is merely playing around with different effects rather than trying to create some kind of cohesive album. I think it does succeed in being the latter; with patience it is revealed to be an unusual trip out into the solar system and beyond. The atmosphere created by this album is definitely rooted in the heavens, yet it isn't typical spacemusic - if there is such a thing. A live approach to the recording has given the sound a freshness and immediacy due to it not having many textures, also the theremin creates a uniquely alien aura. Indeed, the second track "Emergence" with its watery background got me imagining being on the shore of another planet as the ghostly wails of the theremin hint at unusual lifeforms hidden somewhere in the distance. Only in the last track "Slow curve home" do we start to hear anything resembling a rhythm or melody, most of the album is a kind of atmospheric collage formed by samples, drones, washes, and haunting wails. On this final track a muffled sequence forms a nice resonant structure over which a short string of notes is repeated and washes of spacey sounds do brief dances before being replaced by something slightly different. Electronic music's greatest strength, in my opinion, is its ability to transport the listener to different realms -- and not always those intended by the musician -- because of the spectacular range of possible and otherworldly sounds that can be created. Contact Light is a good example of music in this vein, though it may take several listens to really appreciate. |
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