The Oak Ridge Boys - Hymns & Songs, Volume II

Verus Records: 2001

Hey-yo, Past Peoples, 2073 Sykonee back already again. I know, I know, this is growing ridiculous, how many times I've done this already. I warned myself this was a nigh futile endeavour, reviewing cheap options for Oak Ridge Boys albums. A group with as much history as this one, which saw remarkable commercial success after transitioning from gospel to country, will have its extensive catalogue pilfered for credit-ins based on name recognition alone. Never mind their Nauty-Eighties material had nothing to do with their Nauty-Sixties material (even the familiar members hadn't yet become their iconic selves), if there's unsuspecting fans eager for more Oak Ridge Boys music, the dozens of olden recordings are there to fill the gaps, with any number of cheap-o labels licensing out a dozen songs in bare-bones presentation. Even in my time, with the vast webclouds we have, I still don't think every Oak Ridge Boys release has been accounted for. What hope does my past self have?

This one though, this Hymns & Songs collection, this is different. There's actual care taken with these vintage recordings, remastered and even enhanced beyond the capabilities of the original hardware. Not some slap-dasherdly clutch at Americana dollars, but a resurrection of The Oak Ridge Boys' heritage. Capturing the feeling of being within a real rural church in a bygone era, sitting front and centre in the pews, a lead singer to the left of you, the harmonizing trio to the right, and piano or organ or guitar players just in the background. Every voice distinct and separate, not the usual mono-mush so many of these compilations settle for. Heckles, even the vinyl crackle is captured, because I assume the original records were the only sound source this company had to work with. And believe in me, they dug up some ancient recordings.

Ten songs are on Hymns & Songs Volume II, the bulk of which originally come from a 1962 record called He Whispers Sweet Peace To Me on Skylite. A few more were plucked from the 1958 record The Solid Gospel Sound Of The Oak Ridge Quartet. Yessiree, we're dealing with the Boys before they'd even rebranded themselves as Boys - tenor “Little” Willie Wynn was the new kid on this block! And let me tell you, it took some serious sleuthing through your archaic interactive datanet to figure this out. It's astounding just how many gaps in knowledge your version of Wikis and Oggs still have. Imagine having a Britannica without Rasta-Pasta or Dragon nests!

As I've done told yous all before, our enjoyment of The Oak Ridge Boys/Quartet mostly stems from decoding their Atomic codes wrapped in religious harmonies. Yes, they're singing about Literal Jesus, but what is Jesus to any of us but a representation of our noblest deeds in the face of our cruellest actions? When stacked against so many Oak Ridge Boys bone pickers, whoever took such care recreating these recordings is a Jesus to any audiophile, whatever the content within contains.

Various - Home

Spiritech: 2014/2017

Though Spiritech was primarily an outlet for Lingua Lustra and BlueBliss material, they did bring in a couple outside artists too. Data Rebel, Rainbow Vector, Textural Being, Dark Passenger, Snufmuumriko, 0ther... Okay, so we aren't exactly dealing with a roster of well-known producers. Heck, I sometimes feel Albert Borkent only got noticed in the world of ambient through sheer force of will, or at least flooding the digital market with dozens of Lingua Lustra EPs. That's the cynical take though, and I'd rather take the positive take, where the dude is just a workaholic, and understands any hope of getting your name out there in the world of ambient requires releasing music at a ridiculous clip, lest you are lost in the sea of other workaholics. That, or luck out with a record or two on Very Important prints of the scene (which he done did with Databloem).

Getting outside contributions for Spritech didn't hurt though, smatterings of EPs and compilations finding their way into the label's discography throughout its short run. This here Home was one of the few such compilations to get an actual physical release, just this past year in fact. Why this one in particular, I don't know. Far as I can tell, a digital version was originally released back in 2014, and several more were released through Spiritech's Bandcamp since, many of which free (or Name Your Price deals). The liner notes mention Home being dedicated to Mr. Borkent's mother, so perhaps this one has more personal connection for Lingua Lustra, thus more deserving of a spiffier roll-out compared to all the other compilations.

Seven tracks comprise Home, two of which are from Lingua Lustra, natch. The opener Time Window clocks the longest too, a shade under fifteen minutes, mostly minimalist space ambience with echoing tones being sent deep into cosmic realms. Moorland comes off a little more grounded, New Agey spritely synths pitter-pattering in the background, followed upon by lush pads for a moving bit of music; throughout it all, whispery effects guide you along like ghosts.

So Mr. Borkent's material is good stuff, of which wasn't in doubt. How about the rest, then? What does the likes of Shambala Networks, Tonauac, and Reality Sandwich offer? Ultra-minimalist drone, melancholy pad ambient with strings, and blippy ambient techno, respectively. The latter two also have very little to their names within Lord Discogs' archives, at least beyond anything Spiritech related. Then again, the label's catalogue's looking mighty thin compared to their Bandcamp; needs an updating, methinks.

Two other tracks come care of a Markus Guentner and John Daly, both some of the emptiest drone I've ever heard, though Mr. Guentner does add an extra layer of dub warmth. He's also garnered quite the cult following, which isn't too surprising as he's Kompakt alumni. This John Daly though, is it the same Irishman who's been doing house and techno for a decade now? Because his D1 is nothing of the sort. A strange contributor for Spiritech if so.

The Oak Ridge Boys - A Higher Power

Nashville: 1965/1970

Hey-yo, Past Peoples, it's you know who, from a future far from now, where things are weird and wild compared to your primitive eyes. Why, even I, in the year 2073, have a hard time realizing how much things have changed. Apple pie costing seven bones and a femur. Self-driving vehicles tailgating self-driving vehicles in fits of road rage. Cherry blossoms fluttering across my holo-eyes in the long winter days. Sure ain't nothing like that in your times... my vintage times... the days of yore... so much a bore...

Anywhen, A Higher Power sums up the ever-lasting foreverness that is The Oak Ridge Boys quite nicely, methinks. The title, I mean, though those vocal harmonies stretch across the ages just as well. Now obviously when these songs were recorded back in the Nauty-Sixties, that 'higher power' the boys were referring to was in parlance to the Christian God, but the Atomic Brotherhood decoded their words, understanding it's just as much referring to the mighty energies stored in atoms. It cannot be under or overstated how much influence those early shows at secret nuclear research facilities had on the original gospel quartet, men of God being exposed to therein untold secrets of God's power, stored in the very make-up of our beings. Science and religion, joining forces to create a vocal group who's legacy lasted longer than your Beat Boys or Beachles. And I was a fan of those groups too, way back in my youth!

Why else do you think this particular album was renamed A Higher Power? It's original 1965 title was The Sensational Oak Ridge Boys From Nashville Tennessee. How boring, how uninformative - except for the facts that these 'boys' are from Nashville Tennessee, and that they're sensational. Parent label Starday Records reissued it with this new title, maybe as a means to market old material, but the Atomic Brotherhood knows better.

Mangles, this is reaching about as far back into The Oak Ridge Boys' history with any globally familiar members, William Gordon the spry turkey-chicken of the group (Duane Allen wouldn't join for another year). These recordings always feel more homely and, well, churchy, with Willie Wynn's tenor almost reaching choir-boy levels of pitch (I remember first thinking it was a 'church lady' singing – oh, silly naive young me). On the other hand, there's a fair bit of tasty slide-guitar action on here. Whether sombre standards like There's A Light Guiding Me, Land Of Beulah, and Angel Band, or chipper offerings like Shine Down On Me, I Am A Pilgrim, and There's A Higher Power, the ol' glissando twang is in full effect. I wonder who was playing it in these sessions. Like, The Oak Ridge Boys were more than just vocalists, they had those famous Nashville musicians handy too.

And wait, are those doo-wop tunes with I Am A Pilgrim and Just A Clear Walk With Thee? Well, Elvis was a thing, I do recall. He had himself gospel backers even while stealing rockabilly.

Various - Disco Heaven 02.02

Hed Kandi: 2002

I mentioned that 2002 is generally agreed upon as the year that Hed Kandi's quality peaked out. The following couple years weren't too bad, though a definite dip in consistency was settling in. This here Disco Heaven compilation is indicative of the problem. “Wait,” you probably think, “the label fashioned itself after appealing, uplifting house music, and disco's got that in spades. Hed Kandi would be out of their mind not to create a compilation series celebrating it!” And you're right, they did create a series, almost from the outset. It was called Disco Kandi. This, on the other hand, is Disco Heaven. That's right, Hed Kandi was finding so much success in the compilation market that they doubled their disco house options. By the next year, they'd set up a third series called Twisted Disco, and more recently a Nu Disco series. Plus don't forget the one-off Destroy The Disco. I'm surprised they haven't done a Disco Classics yet.

Point is, Hed Kandi's covered a lot of disco house in its day, probably spreading the choice selections out too thin in the process. They might have handled it okay in the early going, as label head Mark Doyle remained passionate of his pet project, but no one could maintain so many compilations with any regular consistency, especially if the franchise kept growing and growing with new series every few years. Small wonder it got sold off to Ministry Of Sound.

And for what reason did Hed Kandi see fit to create Disco Heaven in the first place (beyond muscling in more Hed Kandi covers in record stores)? Mark Doyle's liner notes state “we just thought it would be better to have a new title instead of hitting Disco Kandi 37 sometime next year!” Alright then.

Near as I can figure it, Disco Heaven offers up one disc of your standard uplifting, soulful garage house music – the stuff you'd find on Disco Kandi - and a second CD with clubbier tunes that feed off that loopier French filter funk. Like, I have no idea whether the Disco Kandi dabbled that way too, but I don't recognize any tracks of that sort in those CDs. Meanwhile, Disco Heaven has Junior Jack's Thrill Me; aka: that tune that apes the bassline from Daft Punk's Burnin'. I honestly thought it was some remix of Burnin' when I heard it here, only because I'd totally forgot about Junior Jack's version.

Anything else? Names I recognized from a glance included Kings Of Tomorrow, Full Intention, DJ Antoine, Kenny Dope, StoneBridge, Francois K, Jamiroquai and Shawn Christopher. Names you might recognize include Indigo, The Lab Rats, Shakedown, Kim English, and DaYeene. Really, name-dropping feels pointless with this collection. Disco Heaven is rather all one-note (and one-BPM) throughout, and does get weary hearing Yet Another House Beat unmixed over and over and over. It's still fun in spurts, but a little more variety would have broken up the monotony too.

Various - Beach House 04.02

Hed Kandi: 2002

I reviewed a couple Hed Kandi's Winter Chill compilations while it was still technically summer, so it's only appropriate that I tackle one of their summery collections as winter is settling in. Yeah, we're still in the autumn months, but the fact the West Coast got a white dusting already – the West Coast! - tells me winter is getting a head-start on its yearly shenanigans. I must combat it, then, with fun-in-the-sun Balearic beach music. Funk music for frolicking in the briny waves, soul music for sashaying through the blistering hot sand, and house music for hiding in the shade lest our pasty-asses get burnt by unforgiving UV rays. Man, beaches are kinda' terrible, when you think about it.

But hey, never was there a marketable concept that Hed Kandi couldn't exploit, and Beach House was quickly established as the upbeat companion to their summery Serve Chilled compilations. It's proven to be one of the brand's most successful series, enduring to this day, even dipping into the 3CD option in recent years. Man, considering the label's drop in quality control post Ministry Of Sound buyout, not to mention what's thought of as mainstream 'classy' house these days, I couldn't handle three discs of such waffle. Maybe others couldn't either, hence a return to the two-disc format in 2017.

Beach House 04.02 is the fourth in the series though, released back in Hed Kandi's peak years. Can't argue that based on the track list, some real classics mixed in with the less familiar tunes. I mean, we get Ashley Beedle's Mahavishnu Remix of Bent's Always, one of the best European deep house singles that emerged from the year 2001! There's also X-Press 2's Lazy, Beth Orton's Central Reservation (with a rub from Spiritual Life and Ibadan), Nick Holder's Sumer Daze, and Kaskade's It's You, It's Me (when Kaskade made good music). And that's just the closing stretch of CD1!

Actually, that's about it for recognizable artists, at least where I'm sitting from. Miguel Migs shows up for the dancier CD2, and I spy an Axwell remix on that disc too, but it's mostly blanks for the likes of Rawsoul Orchestra, Jetlag, Jon Cutler, Octave One... two-thirds of Beach House 04.02 really. Not that they're bunk artists or anything, just that there's so much house music out there, keeping tabs on everyone's a difficult proposition. I feel if I'd dug into these Hed Kandi compilations more often, I'd start seeing several repeated contributors, but alas, my exposure remains but a sampling, as only indulged when I spy an eye-catching discount price.

So the music's all fine, but if I must make a quibble, it's that this Beach House compilation only feels properly 'beachy' some of the time. Like, these could just as easily be played in lounges or a terrace, though during daylight does remain optimal. Whatever, I'd prefer a solid selection of tunes that sometimes fits a theme, than a mediocre selection of tunes that struggles to fit a theme.

The Oak Ridge Boys - Greatest Hits

MCA Records: 1980

Hey-ho, Past-Peoples, 2073 Sykonee in your brain again, with a less pretentious greetings - Sykonee Prime tells me it's off-putting for some, making me sound like a smug Future Man. Not sure how that works, as I'm still the same guy from the here and now, just with extra decades worth of outlook and experience. And the things I've seen, you wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the Shoulder Of Orion. C-Beams glittering in the dark at Tannhauser Gate. No, wait, those aren't my memories, they belong to someone else. Can't recall who at the moment, but I'm sure it'll come back to me.

No, many of my recent memories consist of golf. Yeah, yeah, make your 'old man' jokes, but there's a very logical reason for it: golf is one of the few 'sports' still allowed by the Atomic Brotherhood. The courses doubly serve as nature sanctuaries, see, so a lot of effort has been put into creating them. The wilds between civilization just aren't worth hiking through, what with rabid animals, feral forests, and crazed Muricans lurking about. Things didn't help when most of this continent's National Parks were sold off to foreign investors to pay off crippling debts (not that it saved the nations from splintering anyway). Within our sanctuary cities, however, we can maintain and control these 'parks', and get a good bit of exercise in the process whacking little balls over fields of beige and green. And those little flags will always give us hope striving towards a better future.

Okay, enough sports talk. I'm here to review Oak Ridge Boys albums, though in this case, it's another compilation, this time an honest-to-God Greatest Hits option. In this particular release's case, however, it's a rather amusing offering. For one, despite being a gospel group for decades at this point, it was a right rarity their music was rounded up for compilation duty (that'd significantly change in the ensuing years). Once The Oak Ridge Boys started making country music for a wider audience outside their core gospel demographic, their singles started charting too, often hitting the Top 5 mark in the process. They were four albums deep in this new direction when the Nauty-Eighties hit, so a Greatest Hits package seemed ideal to catch folks up. No one could have predicted their actual biggest hits would quickly follow though, this Greatest Hits collection now hilariously incomplete if you're in need of a quick introduction to the group.

For those who grew with The Oak Ridge Boys through their pure gospel era, the switch to songs about Trying To Love Two Women and Leaving Louisiana In Broad Daylight had to be a jarring transition. There's still nods to loving relationships (You're The One, Dream On), but also the tumultuous times too (Cryin' Again, Y'all Come Back Saloon). And nary a word of Jesus anywhere, though plenty of string sections, in that vintage Nauty-Seventies country stylo. Reminds me of Kenny Rodgers concerts off the shoulder of Orion.

Aythar - The God Particle

...txt: 2017

It feels like all my recent Aythar coverage has been leading to this, The God Particle. Yeah, it's Mr. Tamás' most recent effort, but it's his first proper album on ...txt as well. Considering the rarefied air Lee Norris' print currently occupies within ambient techno circles (painfully limited CD runs help), that's no small feat. Not to mention the compilation Dream Of Stars from a year ago served as something of a primer to the Aythar stylee, should you have missed the Carpe Sonum Records debut or his prior self-released material. So while The God Particle is technically his seventh full-length, I can't help but think of it as the first in a new stage for his career: from outright obscurity to ambient techno mini-fame ...which remains pretty darn obscure nonetheless.

Right, I may just be building an idea of “Aythar's Next Chapter” in my head. For sure many artists develop their sound over time, but it's left me with an expectation that The God Particle should sound significantly different and evolved from earlier works. Let's hear what Mr. Tamás has up his sleeve in the right here, right now. Or from last year, The God Particle apparently digitally self-released in 2016 before given this spiffy CD remastering. Well, doesn't that just shoot my narrative in the kneecaps.

Fortunately, Aythar does add some new wrinkles to his sound with this album, so I'm sated on that front. Opener The Sirens Of Titan is all kinds of dreamy, spacey ambience, with sweeping distant pads, burbling arps and spritely synths floating about the sonic ether. The titular follow-up gets in on that ambient techno front, starting out with a minimalist pitter-patter rhythm before escalating, echoing arps join the fray. As the track develops, it threads the line between mint Berlin-School modulations and light IDM manipulations without ever committing to either side. Meanwhile, Return To The Moon gets its dubby psy-chill vibe on, coming off like a long-lost track that didn't quite make it on one of Ultimae Records' Fahrenheit Project compilations.

If it's not clear yet, there be variety on The God Particle, Aythar seemingly trying out various flavours of ambient chill music both new and old. Healing Nature reaches way back to the olden days of Hearts Of Space (without getting too deep in the New Age sap), while Arctic Night's near eleven-minute runtime flits through some good ol' Fax+ ambient techno, and kinda' reminds me of Asura's Galaxies in the process. Molecular Flow almost comes off like something Orbital might have made if they ever contributed to Apollo Records, Pulsar like a latter-era cut from Ultimae (dub-glitch, yo'), and Mission To The Stars... I'd make the Sonic Voyagers call-back, but that might be too obscure even for ambient techno dudes.

Front to back though, The God Particle is solid material, mixing old space ambient with psy-chill and IDM aesthetics. Perhaps not the most original sound on the market, but Aythar does it right by my biased standards.

Various - Global Underground Nubreed: Steve Lawler

Boxed: 2000

The Nubreed series from Global Underground was set up as a sort of farm league for the main series. It's tough cracking that starting line-up, see, featuring such legendary talents as Sasha, John Digweed, Nick Warren, Dave Seaman, and Danny Tenaglia, and British clubland had plenty of hot, young prospects in the pipeline waiting for that call-up from the big leagues to rub shoulders with the f'n All-Stars. The series didn't last much past 2002, though sees occasional dusting off to promote another wave of generational talents, most recently this past month with a tenth volume featuring Oliver Schories. Wow, I don't know these kids at all.

Of the original Nubreeders, only Danny Howells made it to the big league roster, but Steve Lawler got himself a mini-series called Lights Out. Does that mean he was drafted into his own league? Man, this sports metaphor's stressed, but I can't help it – 'tis the season!

Heck, Lawler's own career fits the metaphor: starting out in real underground settings (street ballin', y'all), struggling in the literal 'beer leagues' (re: playing out at bars), then hitting a personal rock-bottom before lucky fate handed him a Cream residency. The year 2000 proved his big breakout, not only landing this Nubreed mix, but two more DJ mixes (Home on INCredible, Dark Drums on Tide), plus a gig for Essential Mix. Just goes to show you don't have to play for the LA Lakers or NY Yankees to have yourself a successful sportsrun. I'm reaching.

By this point in his career, Lawler had built a rep' as the UK's Danny Tenaglia, that dude who'll take you on a long, deep, dark journey through tribal house and dubby prog. This mix comes out when this sound was deemed official “new hotness” status, both Digweed and Tenaglia's recent offerings on Global Underground paving the way for a few years of relentless, unwavering sweaty thump of a groove. And hoo boy, is Steve ever on that sound, making this my third release in a row with a tribal theme going on. (The... odds...!)

Most prog mixes of the time kept the deep shit on CD1, serving as the warm-up for the energetic, peak-time rinse-outs of CD2. Long wary of jocks relying on anthems, Lawler says nuts to that, going with the deep shit for pretty much the duration of both discs. There are a few recognizable tunes – Tenaglia's Elements, Cevin Fisher's Love You Some More, Green Velvet's Answering Machine (“I don't need. This. Shit!”), but that's not the point of this set. Lawler's goal is to drag you into the club, with him in full swing at his personal peak hour, home listening practicality be damned. It makes his Nubreed offering rather samey throughout, and still comes off like an extended warm-up set before a superstar jock takes over the decks. If you're down for a DJ that can ride such a vibe for that long, you'll probably like this. Prefer a little spicy variety myself.

Paleowolf - Genesis

Cryo Chamber: 2016

Holy cow, what are the odds of this happening? Yeah, I've come across a couple instances of it in this endless excursion through my music collection. Eurythmics and Michael Mayer both had LPs called Touch, Moby and Märtini Brös have albums called Play, and Labyrinth is shared by both Juno Reactor and the Namlook-Montanà collaborations (teaser!). It hasn't come up often though, which is interesting in of itself. Either my 1300+ sample size isn't large enough to draw conclusions, or musicians are more creative with their album titles than I thought. Still, that doesn't dissuade the astounding fact that, within the very small sample size of 'Sykonee's 2017 Summer Purchases', I ended up with two albums titled Genesis. There's even a tribal vibe between the two, but the similarities end there.

Paleowolf is another dark ambient prospect called up from the farm leagues for a Cryo Chamber tryout. Heh, not really – it's actually a side-project from one Scorpio V, who made a couple critically-hailed albums for Cryo Chamber as Metatron Omega. That one leans into the ritualistic side of the genre, and Paleowolf does as well, though with a significant primeval bent. We're well before any human civilization, folks, times about as tribal as we've ever been. Not even a series of ravaged ruins to explore in this primitive setting – mankind probably hasn't even figured out how to make a fur hut yet!

The Paleowolf project is four albums deep now (ooh, that Megafauna Rituals has nifty artwork!), first appearing on Echoes Of Koliba Productions with Primordial. Genesis is his second album, adding Cryo Chamber one more sub-micro genre of dark ambient to its ever-expanding canvas. Gotta' fill all the niches, amirite?

Actually, the trick worked, as I cannot deny being at least curious about this stuff. How it relates to other forms of dark ambient? What sort of sounds might creep in when the genre has a heavy reliance of twisting recognizable field recordings into perverse parodies? Whether Cryo Chamber's record of 'cinematic drone' would translate well in a primordial realm, placing me among hunter-gatherers as we prepare for fire rituals, mammoth slaying, and cave bear evading. Oh, of course the latter would be the case!

So you get lots of tribal drumming throughout Genesis, some placing you in the thick of things, others echoing off distant valley mountains obscured by Ice Age fog. Plenty of deep-throated, meditating chants too, with an additional war chant for Hunter II. Some compositions use primitive instruments, like horns in Archaic Eon, and a didgeridoo in Eastern Tribes. And yes, a couple electronic sounds crop up as well, mostly in the form of droning tones, treated effects to voice chants, and subtle melodic touches from synth-pads. Still, they don't distract from the overall feeling of hanging out with neolithic peoples, eating charred Megaloceros meat, and wondering whether death will come from a sabre-cat attack, a competing tribe from over the mountain, or that strange wall of ice inching closer every day.

Astral Waves - Genesis

Altar Records: 2017

Once again, I picked up the latest Astral Waves album without realizing it's DJ Zen's main production alias. I don't think I even checked who the artist was, just perusing through some of Altar Records' recent output, and picking up whatever caught my eye. “Ooh, that one with the dragon looks cool, and this one, it has a final boss of a jRPG, or maybe a Dr. Strange nemesis. Sure, I'll give it a shot. Eh, a new Asura as well? Ah, the cover's just a bunch of high air. Pass for now.” It's been a couple years since his last effort though, and while festival DJing, compilation compiling, studio mastering, and label management undoubtedly keeps Mr. Descoutieras a busy boy, he's gotta' scratch that music-making itch like any of his peers.

Still, I wonder if he really had the time to explore his muse. Genesis isn't so much a new album of new material, as it's an assortment of original productions, plus 'reworkings' of Altar tunes from other producers. No, not remixes, as the inlay doesn't tag the original artists beyond “W+P” credits. Far as I can tell, these are intended to be regarded as Astral Waves tracks, like a cover, or a 're-genesis', I guess. It's not SuryaDemaH's Ashura, but Astral Waves' Ashura II. It's not Alwoods' Rain Of Shooting Stars, but Astral Waves' Rain Of Shooting Stars II. It's not AstroPilot & Astral Waves' Inflation Eternelle, but Astral Waves' Inflation Eternelle II. Huh, why not call it Inflation Eternelle (Astral Waves Version). It's what was done with Dimitriy's take on the tune that appeared on the Fall compilation. I dunno', just seems a tad dodgy presenting these tunes as such, but I'm sure they all gave DJ Zen their blessing.

This is all just niggling-picking though. The music itself is surprisingly diverse and different from what I typically expect out of an Altar record. Gabriel intended this as something of a challenge, making sure each cut was significantly unique from each other so nothing comes off samey throughout (an issue of his last album, in fact). There's also a heavier emphasis on tribal vibes, sections of Genesis coming off like a '90s world beat album, though with modern production chops (can't escape that over-compressed, plastic rhythm).

So you get an extended version of an oldie DJ Zen psy-chill tune of I Believe, redubbed The Believer, now with added vocals from New Age chanter Patrick Bernard. Ashura II chugs along at a crisp pace while digitally chopping up its Indian influences. La Danse du Feu gets in on that Native pow-wow chanting and howling, and follow-up La Danse de L'Eau ups the tempo with drumming and live fluting from Aeolia Project. Then you have your prog-psy numbers (Optimistica II, Rain Of Shooting Stars II, Les Liens du Sang (Profondita Remix)), and a right progressive trance stomper in Inflation Eternelle II. Man, is it wrong that both versions of this AstroPilot collab' get an Ace Tracks nod? Does it matter?