This CD was another recent purchase in an EBay raid (oh, the perils of alcohol and late night internet browsing), and an attempt to catch up with a band I was well aware of at the time, but really didn't get.
Possibly a case of no one among my friends liked the band enough to buy an album and lend me, and the little I heard (Overture on the Virgin sampler V) seemed just too far out and without a tune.
Title track Phaedra is a repetitive electronic motif, full of power with the electronic theme building to a crescendo before a final third which is back to the gentle atmospheric feel. Mysterious Semblance at the Stand of Nightmares is one of my favourite TD pieces - it's a simple piece, which opens slowly, almost reminiscent of an electronic version of Barber's Adagio For Strings, before taking a gently uptempo step, and returning to the opening theme. Movements of a Visionary takes a while to get going past the electronic birdsong, but settles into a relaxing drone before the underlying theme takes over, and a higher pitched tone dominates, before final track Sequent C, at two minutes a mere Augenblick by TD standards, a simple mood piece with a flutey sound, which never quite has time to develop into anything.
4* - a classic piece of electronica from the 1970s
Comments