ALPHA CENTAURI

Coming to you live from the cold, beautiful vastness of space, Alpha Centauri is quite a treat to this reviewer. Far removed from the busy, robotic rhythmic discipline, loops and often more abstract, cleaner electronic soundscapes later in their career, this is hauntingly evocative rather than the more unabashedly cerebral efforts to come.

Effectively some sort of space ambient with robust psychedelic leanings, the pace is rather slow for the most part. A multitude of keyboard sounds and sustained, clear guitar-notes alternately drone past with planetary deliberation and dignity, shoot out like rays of light or swirl together in shifting nebulas for a short while before they dissipate into silence. Add to this the epic grandeur of the towering, sustained keyboard-chords and a bit of truly bombastic percussion combined with the warbling, swooshing and almost watery electronic effects clashing with the sparse and airy arrangements and it makes for a wonderful sci-fi journey to the edge of the universe. As many have noted, it is all a bit eerie and cold at first. The very sounds used (often with a harsh, hissy edge, sharp, icy bite, crisp clarity or echoing depth) do not provide for a warm sonic embrace either.

Yet all is not what it seems. Serving as a sort of fragile melodic anchor and a bit of fleeting earthly flair you find some beautiful, harmonically detached flute-work hovering above the music, adding a touch of flesh and blood to the proceedings. And the excitement and pulse within the amazing drum work (booming, rollicking, almost primal) on Fly and Collision of Comas Sola lends some fire and muscle to the prevailing etherealness. And although the music is structurally loose and somewhat incorporeal, moving about and evolving with a will of its own, I find it often comes together in beautiful, serendipitous little "conclusions" that are almost joyous.

Therein lies the true beauty for me. I do not think it is a very dark or eerie album at all. And if it is, it is the deep darkness in a starry sky, and the eeriness of the thoughts of the very emptiness and size of space itself. I hear the wonder of exploration paired with the gnawing fear that this is a journey that might never end. And that is goosebumps-inducingly haunting and beautiful to these ears.

4 stars.

//LinusW