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Galactic Anthems
by Glenn Adams
Private production, 2002 (Galactic Anthems Music)
http://www.galacticanthems.com
This is one of those rare albums that I like immediately on first playing.
Its sound is familiar vintage synthesizer spacemusic, but those swoops,
chords, bleeps, and beats are in the hands of a clever, humorous, inventive
professional. This appealing collection features a variety of styles. There’
s lounge-style pop (the wryly humorous track 2, “Orbital Bop”) and floating
shimmering ambient on tracks 3, “Journey” and tracks 8, “Midnight Mist.”
(His titles, though, could be a bit more inventive…). Then there’s deep
space chilly dark ambient, rendered with metallic sounds and icy twinkles,
such as in track 8, “Way Out There,” and track 10, “Black Nebula.” In track
6, “Tortured Souls,” Adams delivers his homage to death-metal and thrash
rock, somewhat with electronic tongue in virtual cheek.
If that weren’t enough variety, Adams can also build captivating
sound-pictures such as track 4, “Haunted Desert.” A touch of Arabian Nights,
a bit of percussion, some strange atonal passages, and then back to the
first part in a neat A-B-A structure make this piece my favorite on the
album. Adams closes with yet another sound-picture, a nostalgic image of a
warm beach, with sounds of waves and seabirds all done electronically. The
electronic sounds (rather than “natural” samples”) give an impression of
friendly alien-ness; this beach is not on planet Earth.
From the title “Galactic Anthems” one might expect yet another one of those
heavy-handed Kitaro/Stearns/Klaus Schulze/Constance Demby megaproductions.
But one of the best things about this album is that Adams does more with
less. His “arrangements” are often clear and airy, and even when he gets
into the “darker” drone and drift material, his sound is understated, with
no track or section going on too long. The whole album is done with
lightness and, in places, a kind of spacey charm. It’s the work of someone
who knows his electronic heritage and has obviously had a lot of fun working
with it.
Hannah M.G. Shapero
11/6/02
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