Apollo North – Crossing the Atlantic (CD)

Description

One of the many criticisms of contemporary electronica, specifically of ambient & space music, is of its tendency to bland out in long, tepid passages of faceless whitewash, devoid of character, with little to distinguish it from the endless hours of similar musics present and past. Not so Apollo North. A true partnership forged of influences both Teutonic and today, the team of Paul Darlington (aka Rayspark Industries) and Charles Urban (aka Urban Meditation) aren’t content to simply let their sequencers fly on autopilot, nor their atmospheres shift and purr in anonymous stasis. Across a vivid canvas of four lengthy tracks, their glorious expanse of sound offers a veritable font of surprises. The duo sing the body electric in a literal sense via a simply stunning array of motifs that whirr throughout “Electrical Associations”–liquid squelches forming a rhythmic bed of velvet darkness over which skim juicy tidbits of synth, circuit tweaks, and spongey pads that fulfill all our middle ear desires. “Connection” and “Navigator” inhabit gardens of (un)earthly delights, the former a teeming, watery jungle of effervescent fauna, the latter a fungal labyrinth of unsettling whoosh, melting quasars, and deep-space isolationism, its equilibrium upset by synths reflecting sounds from some gleaming, interstellar metallic strata. And as the album’s titular finale draws to its epic conclusion, a widescreen quest across vast, if inimical, alien terrains recalling the prog-infected ’tronic tropes of Ian Tescee or Lutz Rahn, it’s clear that in Apollo North’s verdant headspace, everyone can hear you dream.