COSMIC GROUND レコード& CD

Review: Since 2014, synthesizer fetishist and long-standing Electric Orange member Dirk Jan Muller has been offering up revivalist Berlin School style electronic explorations under the Cosmic Ground alias. Here he delivers a fifth numerically titled EP, two years on from its predecessor. A-side opener "Girls From Outer Space" is superb, with Muller brilliantly teasing out rising and falling waves of synthesizer arpeggio lines as if he's channeling the spirits of Conrad Schnitzler and the band he was once part of, Tangerine Dream. It's mystical and mind-altering in the best possible way. "Compact/Space" is a ghostly ambient exploration in the style of Pete Namlook, while epic B-side "Operation:echo" sounds like it was recorded forty-seven leagues beneath the sea while Muller was being pursued by a particularly vicious and odd-looking underwater dweller.

Review: Germany's Cosmic Ground is the solo project of Electric Orange keyboard player Dirk Jan Mueller - this is '70s inspired, dark, analogue sequenced, psychedelic-electronic music. The deep, suspense filled journey into the abyss entitled "Legacy" and the brooding esoteric soundscape of "The Plague" last appeared on the CD album version - originally released in 2014 and now out of print. Mueller is said to have created the tracks entirely from analogue machines such the as Mu and Eurorack modular, Fender Rhodes, Mellotron, Moog Sub Phatty, Philicorda, Farfisa compact, Solina String Ensemble and just in case he hadn't name dropped enough: a whole suite of classic Roland machines. But above all is his most bold claim - that absolutely no MIDI was necessary in the production.