MOEBIUS 256 301

Moebius is a fascinating sci-fi spacey electronic album from the french keyboarder Pierre Zalkazanov. Next to Didier Bocquet and to Bernad Xolotl the music of Zanov figures as a convincing reply to German-ish analog synth essays (Klaus Schulze and others). The instrumentation is pretty luminous, featuring a lot of eerie sounds and burgeoning cosmic waves taken from vintage keyboards. The first Zanov called Green Gray represents the pinacle of the kosmsiche synth genre. Moebius is a more modest and academic despite that it includes really elaborate synth epics. The long title piece is the less interesting piece of the album. It's made of passable synthezised orchestrations with no challenging ideas. Plénitude and An Zéro are highly achieved and original compositions alternating Schulze-like spacey meditative sounds and very effective, alchemical, haunted textures in a very dark vibe. The last minutes of Plenitude are impressively sonic and cinematic. An Zero is a moody atmospheric piece for molecular projections, monotonous synth chords and moving electronic arppegios. This album deserves a listening and remains a must have for fans of Klaus Schulze late 70's mellow surrounding sounds.

Album number two from Pierre Zalkazanov. Here he takes perhaps a bit more melodic and rhythmic approach than he did with Green Ray, but still retains all that wonderful '70s cosmic trippiness that I came to love of Green Ray. "Moebius 256", "Moebis 301" and "Enymga" are all rather short and shows a more melodic approach, but with that irresistible '70s vibe going for it. "Pentitude" and "An Zero" are lengthier pieces, a lot of it showing a more rhythmic approach as he uses sequencers here. The back cover shows Zanov in a pose very similar to the back cover of Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene, which probably isn't too surprising, given Jarre was a contemporary and Oxygene did come out in France towards the end of 1976, many months before its international release in the summer of 1977. Zanov is one of those electronic musicians who have fallen through the cracks. While I feel Green Ray is a better album overall, this is still excellent and I recommend it to lovers of '70s electronic music.