TRIP TO G 9

Spiral Realms was a project created around 1993 by keyboardist/violinist Simon House, mostly known as a member of classic mid-70's Hawkwind.Earlier he had played with High Tide and Third Ear Band.After he left Hawkwind in 1978, House collaborated with David Bowie, Mike Oldfield and Michael Moorcock among others, while during the late-80's and early-90's he rejoined both Hawkwind and High Tide for a short period.In 1993, while working on Nik Turner's ''Prophets of Time'' album, he met keyboardist Len Del Rio and teamed up with him under the Spiral Realms moniker.They recorded their debut ''Trip to G9'' in London between March and July 94' and the album was released the next year on Cleopatra's sublabel Hypnotic.

The self-titled track and the following short ''Elements II'' shows the love of House for Electro-Ambient textures, quite close to TANGERINE DREAM's ethereal music parts, with long spacey synths and modern Electronics, being both typical products of their time.Things become extremely interesting with the long ''Red giant'', a mix of impressive Electronic Music with somewhat Neo Prog-ish melodic guitar lines, pounding drum programming and a cosmic atmosphere at the end of a pretty atmospheric track.''Tritium'' is another good composition, performed in the vein of SHAMALL's albums, blending Electronic and New Wave with bombastic guitar and violin breaks and offering rich and furious synth-led grooves.''1000 years under solar sails'' shows a return to the opening forms of the work, a long pure Electronic track with lots of sound effects, cosmic synthesizers and a very spacey mood with soaring keyboards, creating imaginative soundscapes.''Solar flares'' is a another beautiful trip into the world of TANGERINE DREAM alikes.Hypnotic electronic loops with melodic and dreamy synth lines and distorted vocals offer relaxed still very deep synth-based music, that would perfectly work as a Science-Fiction soundtrack.

An ethereal and deeply atmospheric work, characterizing Simon House's talent.Armoured basically with various keyboards and a talented collaborator, the ex-Hawkwind mastermind managed to produce well-arranged and cosmic soundscapes, that still retain an inner power.Recommended.