libertus

Don’t these guys ever tire of getting high and making music? Don’t they realise the fashion for attention spans is toward the shorter, these days?

“Spirals In Hyperspace”, 2004, Magna Carta MAX-9067-2

“Chewier”

What do we get to chew on then? A classic Ozric bass/synth groove with Ed showing mid-way through that he plays better as he gets older. Goes off like a firework show, taste explosions abound. A quiet moment, contemplating a few soaring guitar notes, then driving uncompromisingly back into the bass, threading insanity around it as if there were a shortage.

“Spirals In Hyperspace”

Another 10 minute title track. Another tour-de-force. A trip through hyperspace this time, in a jazz style.

Jazzy, freeform intro spiralling around a solid bass core giving way to freeform guitar, Ed carrying us into a crystalline refrain of the intro theme, the ever-present bass keeping us on course as we cross dimensional boundary after dimensional boundary.

Then we break through into somewhere new, where things are different but strangely familiar. We’re still soaring along with the bass, but is it the same one?

No! Off into the Arabian sands, whirling and twirling, driven by bass and flute in a wild, compelling wheel until Ed rescues us in his spaceship.

Oh, it’s very pretty up here! All these lovely stars! Do we have to go? Do we have to fall? Oh yes, and Ed grinds us into the ground then rolls us down a mountain slalom to shatter into stars.

“Slinky”

Pure silk. In the first half, a simple soulful synth smoothie is slowly made then delightfully devoured before your ears, bar after bar, as the bass croons away giving us something to remember it by.

As time goes by, the melody can be felt to have more and more trouble returning, changing each time, each evolution more fraught. It becomes frightened, lamenting, losing. Who will mourn it?

Ed, of course! If the melody’s dying cries opened your heart, Ed’s guitar tears it out, shreds it, makes it into kebab meat, strips it and feeds it to you with chilli sauce. What an experience!

“Toka Tola”

Odd beginning, strange syncopation, slightly soldiery on steroids. Ed’s guitar is stuttering, so are the synths, commanding dance but not giving time for the motions to complete.

Then they come together and it all makes sense for a moment, then drops away into a bass-driven square-bash, with some noble cause in mind but unspoken. Why are we doing this? Why are we here? Oh it’s all beautiful, but all we’re doing is marching to this beat! Surely there’s more…

Of course there’s more! Let’s go into space, cadets! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee! Yeah! This is what it’s all about!

Oh wait. There’s more after the space journey? What’s this? Are we in the Total Perspective Vortex?

Dumped out of the vortex into open bass, gliding down, down, down, to land amid the clouds.

“Plasmoid”

The plasmoid is an alien sentient organomechanical auditory distortion being that communicates by rhythm and dance in a most groovily unique manner, as plasmoids do, for five minutes. This defies description, you just have to see it. You can’t help but dance along with it, even though you don’t know how. You only know when it’s over.

“Oakum”

Flutes fluttering over lapping water and birdsong, this could be paradise. Sounds lovely but I’ll listen more closely another time. I just always seem to skip this one. Not sure why.

“Akasha”

A spirit-soaring chariot-ride soundscape, conveying us through joyfully playing etheric light, which gets slightly upset with our exuberance, telemathically communicating coming chaos, then suddenly it is dark, unrecognizable, and we fall, spiralling down Ed’s guitar headlong to who-knows-where.

Crash! We’re ok, but bits and pieces of how we got here fly everywhere. There is no way back.

“Psychic Chasm”

We’ve arrived. This is our destination. And by goodness it’s huge. We float above the chasm, higher, higher, but it keeps growing on and on forever. The echoes of your heartbeat rumble and take shape from this gargantuan spectacle. One can but worship as the rhythm of the thing takes hold. It wants you. Enter.

You resist. You want to fly. Fly above and hear the echoes. But it wants you. Wants you. Enter.

You stand on the edge. Vertigo. It wants you. You hear it call. Louder. LOUDER. ENTER!

You leap. You must.

Down. So deep. Further. So deep. Down. Further. Enter what?

Confusion. Soar. Explore. Such joy.

Ed, can I reach the stars if I let you tear out my soul with your guitar? Please do.

After such exquisite pleasure, there can only come the dark side. Such pain. The chasm twists and tortures, I can stand no more. Please…

Soaring again, more urgent, there is little time left. This is the journey you came to take, this is what you wanted to know, this is where you wanted to be, and right here, at the end, spent and panting, is where you are.

Magnificent.

“Zoemetra”

After the knackering chasm experience you decide to rest in that nice Arabic place from the title track.

A pretty Arabian dancing girl, flautily flirty, skimpily skirty, hussily haughty, twirls and twinkles in your eye, mesmeric, until you are hers. She leads you by the hand through bizarre backstreets to the bazaar, where her entire village put on a show for you, and you’re the star. You wake with a hangover after a hazy night to discover you’re married. Har har!

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