THE BEGINNING

The Beginning is a set of early music by Phrozenlight. Considering that fact, I expected very little from this album. Strangely, it's actually very good, and sounds overall more like the more uppity music from Pete Namlook than pure electronic ambience. One important element that sets this album apart from other Phrozenlight releases is the inclusion of beat patterns that really give these tracks a sense of energy, but still in a rather dark context. This is very trance-like space music. The atmosphere that this album creates is very alien-like, in world filled with alien mechanisms, bleeping and blooping down alien roads. I feel like tracks like "Dreaming Dolphin" and "Desert City" would be a great fit for a soundtrack to some bio- engineers bio-engineering a custom life-form, and tracks like "Moondawn on Speed" and "Trance Express" would be fitting for when that custom life-form breaks out and annihilates everyone in the lab through a bloody escape route to freedom.

The only track that doesn't have an effect on me is "Temple of Syrix", which I obviously half- expected to be a Rush cover. It's not, but it is a repetitive synthy beat with very faint percussion in the distance. Not bad, but not particularly interesting (or a Rush cover).

Surprisingly good and different from what I'm used to with Phrozenlight. I recommend this to anyone who is interested in progressive electronic but doesn't have any experience away from danceclub trance music - this is a good crossover album. Spacey, synthy, and dreamy.

Coming to this album after having listened to some of the latest drones of this "flying dutchman" I've been a little surprised. While almost his whole production is made of 1 or 2 hours length tracks made just of a bass note and spacey sounds for which he gets inspiration from the pink period of Tangerine Dream.

This album has music, instead. It's spacey ambient as all the rest but we have five distinct tracks that can be distingued one from the other and are also good enough.

"Desert City" with its loops is very close to the early TD or even to Edgar Froese's works like "Aqua" or "Epsilon in Malaysian Pale". The sounds used are very similar, too. It doesn't happen a lot, but the music has a sense, something that will go almost lost in his more recent releases.

"Dreaming Dolphin" is very spacey and reminds clearly to "Zeit" that's not a bad thing, absolutely. Very similar to "Birth of a Liquid Pleiades" even in the length.

The story doesn't change too much with "Moondawn On Speed". This track has some electronic percussions, an element that will disappear from most of the subsequent production. A very good track.

"Temple of Syrix" has no percussions, instead. There are some square waved sounds in the foreground giving the idea of a melody about to start. It doesn't happen, but little variations make it change continuously. Edgar Froese is still the reference.

Finally "Trance Express" works well. It contains a sort of background melody that the repetitivity helps to identify.

For fans of Progressive Electronic and in particular of early Tangerine Dream (Up to Phaedra).