JOURNEY TO THE VAST UNKNOWN

The story of this Dutch band from my hometown The Hague is both an incredible as a very personal one. Pythagoras was rooted in a Dutch record shop named Moonlight Records in The Hague in the late Seventies, the owner was drummer Bob De Jong and I was a regular visitor of his shop. Another frequent visitor of Moonlight Records was keyboardplayer Rene De Haan, I met him soon and he told me enthousiasticly about his plans to make synthesizer music. It turned out that he lived only a few streets away from me, eventually this led to a visit at his home by me. The 'musical veteran' Bob was positive about 19 years old Rene his ideas and this led to the release of the album Journey To The Vast Unknown in 1981, a private pressing of 500 copies. Bob send a few promo LP's to some known DJ's like Wim Van Putten (famous LP-Show, great for progrock freaks!), Skip Voogd and Frits Spits. Within a very short time Bob's post box in his record shop was flooded with letters from synthesizer freaks, hundreds from all over the country and even Belgium! They had reacted on the contact-adress that the DJ's had mentioned in their radio programms. The album was re-released a few times and eventually it sold at about 5000 copies, an incredible result for a private pressing by an unknown Dutch duo playing synthesizer music! That music on Journey To The Vast Unknown is very melodic, often compelling and hypnotizing featuring slow rhythms with a warm string-ensemble sound, pleasant synthesizer flights and slow but powerful drum beats, it reminds me of Klaus Schulze his early work like Moondawn and Timewind. Some tracks deliver nice work on sequencers, choir-Mellotron and deep bass sounds evoking 74-77 Tangerine Dream. If you like cosmic oriented synthesizer music, this LP (I hope it will be released on CD) is worth to check out.

I have absolutely no idea how this vinyl copy ended up with a friend of mine (he claims he doesn´t remember). . Only now I know this is such a rare record after reading Erik Neuteboom´s review. Anyhow, this is a pity, since I´d like to have Journey To The Vast Unknown on CD. I´m not really fond of eletronic music, but Pythagoras is a different story. After all, this duo comes from Holland, a country where great melodies are the rule on most bands, and this is no exception: the music here is melodic, fluid and quite pleasant. Ok, some parts are a little more dark and abstract, but generally, much more accessible and organic than most artists on that genre (also helped by the fact that they have a real drummer here). I specially enjoyed the long title track with its four distinguished parts. Nothing to write home about, but very good nevertheless, soothing and compelling like some of Tangerine Dream´s most ´conventional´ moments.

An interesting work, to say the least! Rating: 3 stars.