ENTROPY

Line-up / Musicians: - Dirk Jan Müller / analog modular synthesizers and sequencers, vocoder, rhodes, farfisa organs, mellotron, syntorchestra, solina, farfisa professional piano, guitar, bass, samples, field recording, revox

1. "Space Seed" (9:41) entropic space clouds seem to organize and form--as expressed through a driving sequencer rhythm track in the second through eighth minute. The song then closes with more swirling, churning space matter. (17.5/20)

2. "Phasing 76" (9:22) nice, gentle, hypnotic old-school Berlin School sequencer music. Perfect as a defining example for the "mesmeric" term. Unfortunately, there are no high or low points--no action or variation--just straightforward mesmerizing music. (17.5/20)

3. "Substance" (4:17) kind of boring despite its fast-pace underlying rhythm track--totally lacking any engaging melody. (8.66667/10)

4. "The Cage" (6:58) When one stands at the edge of the jungles of The Congo one can feel and sometimes hear the deep thrum of the sub-sonic waves and pulses of elephant talk. DJ has here replicated that listening position with low end sequencer and a plethora of upper canopy animal, bird, and insect noises as generated from his synthesizers. Pretty amazing! (13.5/15)

5. "Q2408" (6:19) It sounds like someone playing an industrial size game of Pong: the slapped bass guitar chords jumping around over the simple little midrange sequencer track are the key points of interest here. (8.75/10)

6. "Randomize User 0" (10:22) barely morphous synth sounds and notes darting and floating around before a sequencer arrives to pick us up and take us on a tour of celestial phenomenon. The chromatic synth notes that seem to randomly arrive and disperse are wonderful as the rhythm pattern of the sequencer grows in strength and volume in the seventh, eighth, and ninth minutes. Then it all reverses as DJ takes two minutes to resolve the passing skytrain with a kind of and doppler effect. Pretty cool. (18/20)

7. "Equilibrium" (6:53) more chaotic space sounds that remind me a lot of much of Stefano Musso's less melodic work. (13.25/15)

8. "Entropy" (18:42) an eery of purely atonal/nonmusical space sounds (not unlike some of the sounds TANGERINE DREAM used in their 1970s explorations). Could easily fill some of the "disturbing silence of space" scenes in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like TD, DJ has chosen to let a hard-driving sequencer theme enter in the eighth minute, eventually rising to the fore and taking over as the dominant sound force despite the continued irregular waves of space sound. Actually, the integration achieved between the sequencer and space waves is quite brilliantly actuated: as if the forces of space are chasing and repeatedly washing over the object-in-motion. In the sixteenth minute the sequencer fades into the background and out of the picture as space noises also decay into a vacuum state despite the life-attempts of a kind of heartbeat sound. Interesting and cinematic. (35.25/40)

Total Time: 72:34

Clearly DJ Müller has become more enchanted with the Kosmische possibilities of "music"-- experimenting with non- musical sounds in an effort to create his imagined extraterrestrial soundscapes (this despite the fact that sound will not/cannot occur where there is no atomic/molecular density, i.e. where there is no atmosphere to carry the sound waves). He does, however, like to anchor much of his soundscaping in modern variations of Berlin School sequencer programs: the rhythms aren't always present but they do seem to appear in the middle of these mesmerics as if to ground them in human (or robotic) perspectives.

B+/four stars; an excellent addition of experimental Kosmische Musik to any prog lover's music collection. I love DJ Müller's experimentation with old school Berlin School forms and formats while adding his modern synthesizer sound discoveries.

I used to listen to and review DJ's Cosmic Ground releases as if they were candy. Looks like I need to play some catch up with all of the releases I've missed over the past ten years.