“The dream of new age music was shadowed in its own time – the late 60s and early 70s, when the first major New Age labels were set up – by terrible psychic fallout: drugs, psychosis, political despair, the collapse of hippie into another species of cutthroat entrepreneurialism”
Any consideration of this anthology could just as easily start elsewhere. It could start with the upward twist of Elizabeth Fraser's vocal midway through 'Heaven Or Las Vegas', edges softened by the filigree of Robin Guthrie's guitar FX, or with the rumbling haze around John Cage and David Tudor playing Variations IV in a Los Angeles gallery in 1965, scraping objects and conjuring exotic climes on the turntable. It could start in the swerve of Vangelis' synths mapping the vertiginous transformation of body and urban space in Blade Runner, or in the overloaded, fragile bell and gong tones of Vodka Soap's Un Pyramid Chandelier or James Ferraro's Heaven's Gate. It could start with the opening minutes of waterfall, birdsong and flutey Korg of Oneohtrix Point Never's 'Format & Journey North'.
Originally published by The Quietus.Read the full review on The Quietus