MOON

This is the first of very many attempts to clone Tangerine Dream's Zeit put in place by Bert Hulshoff, aka Phrozenlight. I have to say that this is not the worst but his releases are so similar that I don't know if I'll review any other of his albums after this.

This is not the worst because at least sometimes something happens. A note is replaced by one higher or lower, the volume is a little increased or lowered and unexpectedly, sometimes a new sound is added. The bad is that Phrozenlight seems to have only partially understood Edgar Froese and Tangerine Dream, even of the pink period. He has taken the spacey mood, something that he does very well, but he has missed all the psychedelic and krautrock influences. What is mainly missed respect to TD is the capacity to be hypnotic without having to be boring. TD (I mean in the pink period) have square waves, drums, and at least little variations that are able to make the music change totally without making the listener aware.

The first "phase" in this album has some little variation but is very far from being even remotely compared to Zeit or to Atem. It's not a bad listen, if you are looking for spacey landscapes or you have smoked something illegal this album can work fine, but apart some little exceptions it's like the fans of a battery of servers in a datacenter. A continuous noise that after a while goes in the background of your mind and you become aware of it only when the power goes down and they stop.

The Second Phase is a little more high-pitched respect to the first and there's also a shy attempt to add some rhythm, but in the end it's like the datacenter has been restarted. It's a pity because some of the noises below are not bad. Just a bit of human more and a bit of robotic less and it wouldn't have been bad. I find some parts of this track even enjoyable, until I have something to smoke, of course....

The Third Phase starts in crescendo from few seconds of silence, then it's even promising when after 1 minute it reminds to some "lunar" parts of the 2001 Space Odyssey soundtrack. The fact is that the discovery of the monolyth in the movie takes few minutes while in this track it takes more than 25 and at the end the aliens don't receive any signal.

The Fourth Phase is different. The background chords seem to be two....

Well, cut in short pieces this is not totally bad, but playing a single chord adding a soundscape here and there is not the same of composing Zeit. I personally enjoy this music sometimes, but I can't suggest it to anybody else. If you look for spacey landscapes they are the only thing that you can find in this album, or in most of the Phrozenlight's production. There are surely some exceptions. I can't believe that he has released the same album about 100 times.