EPITAPH FOR VENUS

A very impressive piece of early progressive electronic music. Fans of the noisier end of Krautrock will be disappointed: what we have here is a very early blueprint for New Age music, with jazz-tinged instrumental interjections occurring sufficiently often to make sure the album doesn't become monotonous but sufficiently subtly so as not to disrupt the spacey, relaxing effect of the music.

The supposed rumours that this is a fake recorded in the 1990s didn't seem credible to me - musically speaking, the album sounds extremely authentic for the Krautrock scene of the time, with commonalities with Klaus Schulze's early work and Tangerine Dream's Zeit. In particular, the other two bands who were involved in this supposed fakery scandal - The Nazgul and Cosmic Corridors - supposedly consisted of complete unknowns, whereas this one is presented as a side project of a member of Dzyan, and it would be an *extremely* stupid move for forgers to try and pass the album off as the work of a real person who could contradict their story!

Nonetheless, here and there a careful listener can catch hints that all is not as it should be here; having heard the Cozmic Corridors release, which I think is a less capable fake, I think the odds are in favour of this being a very well-observed forgery. But even if it is fake, what of it? The music on here is good enough that any fan of progressive electronic or the more ambient end of Krautrock will be satisfied regardless.