Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Astral Magic- Wonderland (Astral Magic 2023)

A limited edition of 40 on CD-R in a really cool sleeve. It features 13 tracks and the last American Poet, Shane Beck on last track, Seen through the Cosmic Eye. One of the rare Astral Magic releases where Santtu plays everything. The CD is mostly instrumental as well. It starts off with some crazy sequenced synth and lots of space bubbles and sounds before heading into the poppy groovy Across the Spheres which features a vocoder like vocal. Starry Night Sky has a sort of drum with conga drum rhythm in sync with a synth line that reminds a bit of Hawkwind. Mystical Journey is very spacey. Thunder Riders Last Flight is an nice tribute to Nik Turner (Hawkwind), who sadly passed away last year. A happy theme is played out and Santtu has written some nice lyrics but the vocal is mixed so low you can hardly make the words out compared to the next track, Wonderland. This is an uptempo and almost rocking track, if it had guitar. Nice bass line and some cool synth solos. The Walls are Melting is back to spaced out stuff with a spoken word by Santtu.  Dome of Stars is a quite happy mid paced track with a lot of spacey sounds.. Nostalgia has a similar mood to Dome but quite different synth lines.  Still makes you happy. Uranus Drone is loaded with weird and trippy sounds but one slow main synth line holds it together. Looking for Love has a laid back vocal. Twilight Pixies is another happy bouncy one with a long lead synth solo and at least 2-3 layers of other rhythmic synths. The final track, features Shane, his voice coming out of the void to capture your imagination. A fitting ending. 

A lot of cool tracks on this CD as always but I am starting to get the feeling that I have heard a lot of these themes, ideas before….  

http://astralmagic.bandcamp.com 

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