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Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Astralasia- Oceania (Fruits de Mer, Winkle 27)

I really liked the last Astralasia record a lot. I had no idea they had a new one. The group is very diverse so you are never quite sure what you will get but for sure a lot of spaced out electronic music and maybe some guitar as well. This is a double album with most tracks between 5 and 7mins with the exception of the long side 4 22 min Time, Tide and Eternal. The album starts off with Alooland, a sort of new age synth piece. This is not my favorite style of stuff from this band at all.  It slowly builds up with synth bass and programmed drums. Ghosts in between is another synth piece with some nice piano. Oceania has a very fast synth arpeggio and some really cool psychedelic guitar playing. Great track.  Tangerine Skies starts with a female spoken voice and then a dreamy synth line starts and there are some more ethereal voices mixed in as it builds up. Kaleidoscopic returns to this new age Kurzweil like synth with some piano stuff, a very floating happy elevator music track. A bit of lounge jazz like guitar which later evolves into some cool guitar. This ends and it changes into a very much piano focused song until the end. North Star features a pretty cool saxophone, played very slowly. This track slowly builds in some pretty cool layers over the 7mins.  Side 3 starts with Astral Voyager with some Ozrics like guitar as the track builds up. Mushroom heartbeat starts with a piano work out before the synth and female voice kicks in. A long Shore is a 2.5 min track that ends side C with another floating new age like thing with some saxophone.  Side D is the 22 min long track.  It takes a long time to develop and features flute, electric tabla (?), and some other extra percussive sounds we have not heard yet on the album. A quite deep bass that shakes the floor is also present (mostly likey synth) as the track grows.  It gets really spaced out and lost in space around 15mins until the end. If you like the last several albums you will dig this one as well.


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