SPACE FOR THE EARTH

England's most famous psychedelic electronic rave hippies have been at it now for almost 40 when OZRIC TENTACLES was formed by the tripper in chief Ed Wynne who has remained the mastermind and only member ever since. This project was quite prolific in the 80s and 90s releasing an album every two or three years which also was true in the first decade of the 2000s but after Wynne suffered his entire house being ravaged by wildfires in the US state of Colorado in 2012 and lost his equipment, home recording studio and much of the archived material, this blow set Wynne back and the 2010s has produced far fewer OZRIC albums as Wynne has focused on other things.

Never one to officially retire, the OZRICS are back with the first album in five years. SPACE FOR THE EARTH, the project's 22nd studio album which may not move forward into new musical arenas but does display the consistency of the OZRIC sound which still to this day sounds like no other. After the fire incident Wynne returned to the UK and recorded SPACE FOR EARTH in his Bubble studio in Scotland and features his son Silas Neptune on keyboards along with several ex-members of the band including drummer Balázs Szende.

Honestly there isn't one thing you can say about this OZRIC album that you really can't say about the rest. The formula of mixing strong driving bass lines with jittery keyboard parts, space guitars and that sweeping space rock sound from 70s bands like Gong, Steve Hillage and Hawkwind are all still in tact as is the world music influences of funk, jazz, dub, reggae and of course ambient new age. "Stripey Clouds" starts the seven track album of about 45 minutes in strong form with all the aforementioned stylistic approaches taking turns at unleashing soothing melodies with progressive time signature breaks which qualifies the band to be included in prog turf.

Once again these are all instrumentals with jazzy interludes and ethnic instruments inserting unique tones and timbres but as i've already said there is really nothing that sets this album apart from the vast bulk of the band's canon which for those who love consistency is a good thing but for some of us who hope to see a band evolve their sound into something more, well more anything really, find that this band is simply stuck in a groove of its own making seemingly in perpetuity. As always the OZRICS deliver a substantive display of what they do best but if i had to offer an explanation why this album would be an excellent addition to your collection then i'd be at a loss for words. This is a good album for sure but not anything beyond.