Originally released in 1976, the album finally has found an audience and has been reissued by Staubgold. Patrick Vian is the son of French jazz musician Boris Vian. He was also a member of the underground rock band Red Noise, who made one album that is quite well known among prog and psych collectors. Bruits Et Temps Analogues is actually quite an interesting album that has probably been taken for granted over the years. Vian has assembled a high caliber instrumental quartet that includes noted percussionist Mino Cinelu. Vian plays a variety of analog synths - Moogs and ARPs. George Granier is the second keyboardist and Ame Son's Bernard Lavialle plays guitar. The music is flat out prog rock. Vian's use of synths has a bit of a spacey quality but not in a textural way - he's playing laser-like leads while the band plays in a bit of a jazz rock style…

This album features reworked versions of his golden oldies and three new pieces. The result of the new orchestration is a modern-sounding remix album, rather than a definitive greatest hits.
The music itself, as a collection of greatest hits tracks, is a surprising choice. There's no "Revolutions", "Chronologie 4", "Ethnicolor", "Calypso", "Oxygene 8" or "Hey Gagarin", for instance. We are treated to fresh, excellent reworkings of classics: "Oxygene 2", "Equinoxe 3" and "Last Rendez-vous". Aging tracks such as "Oxygene 4", "Chronologie 6", and "Rendez-vous 4" have all been brought up to date. The three new tracks recall Robert Miles and Orbital. They're good but there's a feeling they were left over from previous projects. There are too many synth presets sounding too clinical and lacklustre compared to the high standard of sounds used in Jarre's other studio albums. Moreover, there are finer unreleased tracks that could have been included.

Originally released in 1974 this album was in a limited pressing of about fifty copies and sold at art shows in Germany - much like other titles that were reissued on CD through the Psi-Fi label - like Cosmic Corridors, Golem, Pyramid, Nazgul and Temple. It recalls the colder side of early Tangerine Dream for the most part, but manages to get a few melodic licks in between the lines and features a masterful command of alien atmosphere. Three lengthy tracks to allow you to be totally taken in - "Lunarscape" proves to be quite trippy, mysterious and out-there, as "Ethereal Jazz" features plenty of bubbling synthesizer and jazzy percussion and "Venus Rising" has a brain-damaging atmospheric vibe.

Originally released around the turn of the millennium, Musick to Play in the Dark featured a restarted Coil at bay, with original members John (later Jhonn) Balance (R.I.P.) and Peter Christopherson joined by synthesist/bassist Thighpaulsandra, and Drew McDowall (replaced by Rose McDowall on the second volume). These are long-form works, collections of mood pieces in several modes, and what’s interesting (and somewhat predictable) is that the patience displayed while shifting in between these modes creates a tension and space that feels… almost removed from music by a step, as if the performance decided to slowly back away from Coil at a respectful, totality-fearing distance (or maybe it was the psychic force of their music that pushed it all back)…

Departure from the Northern Wasteland, a classic of the progressive electronic genre, contains four pieces that are almost perfect in their realization of the sequencer as a compositional tool. Hoenig took the concept of repetitive music further than most anyone in his homeland and claimed his inspiration was drawn from American minimalist composers Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley. The title track is a sublime 20-minute journey through ever-changing melodic and rhythmic phase relationships, creating the vivid sensation of a train ride through misty Northern European landscapes. "Hanging Garden Transfer" then speeds things up a little and is therefore less ideally suited for falling asleep (or waking you up). "Voices of Where" makes the picture of Path Finder on the desolate planet of Mars, appear before the mind’s eye, searching for any proof of life: not a single beat, just wonderful dreamscapes…

Klaus Schulze, one of the most illustrious exponents of the kraut-electronic musical current, was born on the 4th of August 1947, right in Berlin, the heart of the entire action. He has also used the alias Richard Wahnfried. He was briefly a member of the electronic band Tangerine Dream as well as cofounding Ash Ra Tempel before a pioneering and prolific solo career of 40+ albums (totalling 110+ CDs) in 30+ years.
In 1969, Klaus Schulze was the drummer of one of the early incarnations of Tangerine Dream for their debut album Electronic Meditation. In 1970 he left this group to form Ash Ra Tempel with Manuel Göttsching. In 1971, he chose again to leave a newly-formed group after only one album, this time to mount a solo career…

Richard Wahnfried is the side project of Berlin electronic pioneer Klaus Schulze. The pseudonym's etymology comes from Shulze's admiration for Richard Wagner. The name Wahnfried was previously used in a title from his "Timewind" album. The project has started in the late 70's. Musically it alternates Schulze's usual synth material in his solo works and a handful of instruments as guitar, tribal percussions, saxophone thanks to the collaboration of several famous rock musicians. Each album features guest musicians as the vocalist Arthur Brown on "Time actor" (1979), Schulze's friend and guitarist Manuel Gottsching (Ashra Tempel) on "Tonwelle" (1981). Carlos Santana's drummer Michael Schrieve also participated on several albums. The result is orientated to more mainstream genres with a constant exploration in electronic, "space" synth music.

Kit Watkins has played keyboards for Happy The Man, Tone Ghost Either, and between 1979-1982 was a member of Camel (recording on I Can See Your House From Here as well as On the Road 1981 and On The Road 1982). He has also perfomred on recordings by Forrest Fang, The Blind Messenger, Richard Sinclair, Paul Adams and Djam Karet.

In 1991, Klaus Schulze performed three concerts to celebrate his 20 years as a solo recording artist. The Dome Event: Cologne Cathedral is the third concert and the third CD. Like the other two CDs, this disc has an extra track, composed to match the live material and recorded in the studio. Schulze is a prolific live performer, and his music loses nothing in the translation to the concert stage. This disc features his signature heavy sequences, some very gentle acoustics, and deep atmospheres. Strange vocal samples take the set over the top.

The Essential 72-93 is a makeshift best-of, piecing together some of Klaus Schulze's most alluring and interesting electronic offerings. With 14 tracks from over ten albums, this compilation is a generous retrospection into this former Tangerine Dream member's material. Many of his masterpieces are included on this double CD, like the swirling electronic breeze of "Wahnfried 1883" from 1975's Timewind, or the out-of-body atmospheric waves of "Floating" from Moondawn. Also breathtaking is the ten minute synthesized soup of "Ludwig II Von Bayern" off of the monumental X album, and the chilling glaze of "Freeze," a superb example of keyboard artistry as Schulze precipitates an icy climate from basic tonal applications…

From MEDIUM, an electronic music label run by Masanori Nozawa, a writer/producer based in Utsunomiya City, Tochigi Prefecture, who has produced outstanding works centered on dance music/ambient chillout, a masterpiece dedicated to Japan's ambient scene has been released. Long-awaited appearance!

Shadowlands contains just five tracks over 2 CDs, and as we've come to expect from Schulze, look for plenty of mind expanding explorations into space and loads of calming tranquility. The near 57 minute "The Rhodes Violin" offers up soothing, at times fluttering synth washes, brief spoken word vocals, and a myriad of ethnic Middle Eastern instruments. The epic title track opts for more menace, and will remind some of the early Tangerine Dream material, complete with ominous synth & Mellotron sounds plus those Middle Eastern influences. You'll even find some intriguing space rock mixed with programmed dance rhythms on the intriguing "In Between". With well over 2 hours of material on Shadowlands, there's a lot too digest, and unless you are a real fan of electronic/ambient/space rock, some of this will wear out its welcome pretty quickly, but for those who have followed Schulze throughout this career and don't mind some well executed exploratory sounds, there's plenty to dig into here.

Franco Battiato is one of the most successful singers in Italy. He began his career as a "light" singer, recording a few singles. In 1971 he started his particular journey through experimental music, recording his proggiest issues: "Fetus", "Pollution", "Sulle corde di Aries". Some very atmospheric parts and some very melodic songs make these records worthwhile, along with musical references to the arabic culture and italian folk that will surface from time to time in all of his following output. His next records are gradually more and more experimental, exploring minimalism and culminating with "L' Egitto prime delle Sabbie", with two long pieces based on hardly one note and its harmonics.

In 1980 Zanov began working on a fourth album, but lacking time needed for such a creation, he decided in 1983 to take a break, vowing to resume one day. In 2014 Zanov got an Arturia Origin synthesizer and digitalized all of his recordings from 1983. He modified and completed these recordings to recreate the sound environment. Featuring a dazzling display of electronic instrumental music sounds, Virtual Future sounds like a throwback to the late 1970s.

Zanov is one of the great electronic musicians of France of the past and present! “Moebius 256 301” continues the soundscapes introduced on “Green Ray” with new melodic elements creating another immersive aural experience, this is its brief history. In December 1976 Zanov expanded his synthesizer set up with a new ARP2600 with sequencer. 1977 shaped up as a busy year expanding Zanov’s musical realm with a series of live performances and more instruments offering new musical possibilities. “An Zero” was the first composition completed for Moebius while preparing for his first live concert at the Paris Laser Olympia in March 1977…