MUSIC FROM THE GALAXIES

What Dr. Fiorella Terenzi has done is develop a method of translating radiation detected from objects in space, in this case from a distant galaxy, in this case one known only as UGC 6697, into audible sounds. The radiation waves cycle between 1 billion and 1 trillion Hertz, so she has "mathematically reduced the high frequency" into something humans can hear (between 20 and 20,000 Hertz).

The result are sounds that often sound like some of the early analog synthesizer pioneers like Keith Emerson and Klaus Schultz. Dr. Terenzi takes these sounds, and pieces them together, making the pieces less like music, and more like a sound collage of a trip through intergalactic space (if audio tones were not actually impossible is space).

Only the last track, Cosmic Time, qualifies as traditional music. It is a new age style composition written and performed by Gordon Bahary, with Dr. Terenzi blending her sounds into the music. Compositionally and tonally, the music sounds very much like Andreas Vollenweider's popular tracks, and the galactic sounds lift the music above the banality of most new age.

When this album was released I was working ay a CD store located at M.I.T., and as such we probably sold more copies of this album than most, but the purely nebulous (see what I did there?) nature of the majority of the tracks makes this appropriate for only occasional listening.

I'd rate this between 2 and three stars, and probably closer to 3.