KNUTSFORD IN MAY

RADIO MASSACRE INTERNATIONAL were the first Electronic band to play here at Jordrell Band Space Research Centre in Cheshire.This concert took place in the shadow of the biggest satellite dish in the world.This I believe is significant because it clearly inspired the band to perform what I consider to be the greatest live Electronic concert I have ever heard. You can see the large satellite dish on the album's cover.This concert happened on May 18 1996. The lead electric guitar and mellotron choirs simply blow me away. So inspiring and moving. Then we get the Electronic music which is way over my head. They call it the RMI Rack like a fourth member of the band it is laden with hi-tech sequencers, controllers, modules, effects and samplers which responds to the avalanche of midi data flowing through it by throwing out the group's sound straight from the analogue archive.

"Under The Dish" opens with siren-like sounds and spacey ones too. Check out the mellotron choirs that roll in. Amazing ! It's spacey late as it blends into "Frozen North Part 2". An electronic beat 1 1/2 minutes in as artificial noises follow. Spacey sounds sweep across the soundscape 2 1/2 minutes in. It's building after 3 minutes including guitar. It settles back. I like the guitar after 5 minutes. Mellotron very late. "Ha'Penny Bridge" opens with experimental sounds.The mellotron choirs 2 minutes in are over-whelming. Gulp. Different sounds come in before 5 minutes then the mellotron once again floods the soundscape. My God ! And again after 8 1/2 minutes. Not worthy !

"Skeletope" has some killer electronic beats early. Spacey synths come in over top after 4 minutes. It sounds like a space transmission 13 1/2 minutes that will come and go.The guitar lights it up 17 1/2 minutes in. Incredible.Synths replace the guitar before 20 minutes as they sweep in. "Action Painting" has these lighter electronic pulses and other sounds. It's building.Amazing sound 4 minutes in as it keeps building. Mellotron after 6 1/2 minutes and after 9 minutes. It seems to start to wind down 11 minutes in.

A huge outburst of applause when this concert ends including from yours truly.

Beam me up Scotty

The environment along with the circumstances of any given concert is always essential - I guess more than we will ever know. Sometimes it´s the feel of the audience that makes the artists give just that little extra - transforming what could have been a run of the mill gig into something unintelligible and magic. Take the Band of Gypsys record with Jimi Hendrix´ sonic rendition of the Vietnam war during Machine Gun, or maybe the Santana performance at Woodstock from the same year. Both of them contain a ferocity and an inexplicable energy that transcends both time and space, and leaves the audience in sheer unadulterated awe.

However blasphemous and pagan this may sound to you, Radio Massacre International actually manage to evoke those same feelings and connections between the music and the gig. This is just an electronic concert... Recorded back in 1996 under one of the biggest satellite dishes in the world, Knutsford in May feels like a major event, that just 2 decades earlier would have made booming headlines, and drawn music fans from all over the world to experience this far out and riveting experiment. One of the key elements here, is that you can virtually feel - and almost grab a hold of the inspiration during this gig. It is practically running down the sides of the satellite dish, and all through this event, the band continues to give just that little extra sounding like a string of soft implosions - and explosions, so when it actually finishes, I feel like I´ve been through an asteroid storm and I could sleep for a decade. It´s exhaustive and fulfilling at the same time.

Through improvisational skills, bleeping sequencers, choir mellotrons, waves of gentle riffing guitars to muffled yearning and simple string work, there indeed is some kind of deep space travel going on here. Imagine Klaus Schulze and Edgar Froese rolling up a doobie, for then to start communicating with a towering mountain, and you are almost there, but then again not really.... It is so easy to compare electronic artists to those 2 godfathers of yesteryear, and sure RMI utilizes much of the same instruments and wobbling textures, but then it only makes it all the more fantastic, that these guys emanate a distinctive personality. They sound like themselves so to speak...

This is an astonishing take on the Berliner school, and I urge anyone with an interest in experimental electronic music to have a listen. It is slow moving music that takes its time to develop, and if you´ve ever seen those nature movies where the cameras have been filming for long periods of time - capturing the snow-capped peaks of Kathmandu changing colors in the most enchanting way inside a time frame of 30 seconds, then try imagining these natural mechanics applied to music.

I am not going to scrutinize these tracks, because they feel like they belong to themselves in their own little world, and personally I think it´d perhaps destroy these mysterious images that burns inside my mind - like imagination infused petrol - all on account of the music.

What this record really sounds like, makes me think of the ascending smoke from a lit cigarette. You know those spiraling smoke patterns caught in the light from an overhead window - looking like shifting mosaics of a rising spirit piloting for the upper stratosphere, if only the winds would keep to themselves. Welcome to the magic.