“There is some good Berlin School that seems to be lurking in Roger Taylor's fingers and head”
1 Circular Logic 5:11
2 Cosmology 4:51
3 False Memory 4:18
4 Solarius 3:26
5 The Chain of Events 3:39
(DDL 21:26) (V.F.)
(Berlin School)
It's not something I like to do! There are so many new, like good old, albums to review that to write a review on a E.P. seems pointless to me. But now, I responded to the invitation of the Cyclical Dreams label and there are some E.P. in this growing discotheque which continues to diversify the EM styles that it promotes in an international radius. Trying to find information on the Internet with a name like Beyond Our Galaxy is far from being easy. Now imagine when the artist behind the project is named Roger Taylor! Ittchhh… That makes it even more difficult, but I did. First of all, Beyond Our Galaxy is a solo project that Roger started in 2008. This American musician is a big fan of 80's Synth-Pop, especially keyboardists. He has acquired a good variety of synths that he is learning to play without training. He composes his music, that he offers on MySpace, while deepening his knowledge of musicians such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Vangelis and others. A first contact was made with the Canadian label Rcat Records which produced a first album entitled Event at Sirius B in 2010. Chronosphere came the following year. After a long hiatus of 7 years, the album The Rubicon Moment was released in 2018. The video on YouTube offers energetic music in the Berlin School style with a good sequencer-based style. I really liked the songs that I heard here and there during my research that I carried out while listening to this CIRCULAR LOGIC which results from an invitation of Cyclical Dreams Music so that Beyond Our Galaxy joins the artists of the Argentinian label. This 20-minute E.P. offers nothing less than particularly good Berlin School compressed and condensed ...
The title track draws a ferocious line from the sequencer coming from the earth's subsoil. They rise rapidly towards our ears with a good system of alternation which gives it a spasmodic appearance. Another line of jumping keys gets mobilized with a more harmonic vision. The complicity remains close between these two movements until a bass line frees an impulse that gives more fluidity to the rhythm while implanting a more melodic vision with this time a line of arpeggios with slightly sparkling tones. Mainly in sequences, Circular Logic stigmatizes a good rhythmic race between 4 lines with intricately linked destinies in a well-balanced time frame. Cosmology puts a grain of melody, of melancholy too, between our ears with a scent that makes me feel a Fade to Gray played in a parallel universe where the rhythmic melody remains bland, but easily heard. We are in psychedelic synth-pop, for the spectral version of the title that we guess every second. The sequencer is excellent here! False Memory offers a melancholy opening with mist and bass pads that give this gloomy tint to a floating music. The movement of a sequencer agitates keys which skip in unruly rows, creating an astral choreography where sweetness and animosity are grafted. A good title which has a short life if we consider the rhythmic influx overflowing with energy in its last 90 seconds. Solarius also gives me the impression of wanting to finish too soon at all costs. The structure undulates with a first musical layer that spasmodic arpeggios jostle just before the arrival of a creeping bass. This ambient rhythm structure is coated with cosmic perfume and then with a layer of vocals before percussions lead Solarius into an intense and very compact cosmic rock with a big sound mass and arrangements that lack the time to produce the desired effect. Layers and pads of fog attempting to camouflage a dense electronic sound fauna and its fields of crackling and white-noise, The Chain of Events takes a strange path to end in a psychotronic New Age phase with the voices of nymphs in a sonorous din that seems to be at the west here.
Did I like it? First of all, my ears had to deal with a musician with an interesting musical background and a good melodist vision. That being said, Beyond Our Galaxy's ideas are good and visibly lacking in time for them to flourish in this E.P. which seems too short compared to telegraphed fades-out. Titles like False Memory, Solarius and The Chain of Events have great potential for longer developments. But that belongs to the artist. But whatever, there is some good Berlin School that seems to be lurking in Roger Taylor's fingers and head.
Sylvain Lupari (November 3rd, 2020) ***½**
Available at Cyclical Dreams Bandcamp
Amazing album