Label: Kscope Records
Release date: October 9, 2020
Production: Ed Wynne
Album length: 47.17 min
Genre: Psychadelic Rock / Space Rock
Rating: 9.5/10
This year Ozric Tentacles are back with their fifteenth “post-cassette” studio album, the latest chapter in a long-running and above all colorful career that kicked off in the first half of the eighties. The brilliant Ed Wynne is the man who has survived every age of Ozric Tentacles, the good and the bad, all the highs and lows, and the one constant of the band throughout. That goes for the new album “Space for the Earth” too. And along with it comes yet another album built on the band’s well-known and uniquely peculiar musical formula.
The new album was recorded entirely in the Scottish countryside, dotted with hills and valleys. After he and Brandi split, Ed moved from Colorado to Scotland. Amid the raw purity and virginal calm of mother nature, with all her lush greenery, babbling mountain streams as clear as crystal and intoxicating, oxygen-rich freshness, he went looking for peace. The Blue Bubble Studios, where the album was recorded, stand right there. Add the presence of “sweet green herbs,” whose heady aroma the artist’s nostrils eagerly drink in, and the effect of all this comfort and a kind of new musical celebration is, as Ed Wynne puts it, written down in “music from space, sent from there to the people of Earth to enjoy.” Wynne described the lockdown situation in which the new album took shape as a great opportunity for nature and the planet to get their space back, catch their breath and recover. For people, he said, it’s just as handy a chance to “reset,” try to find their origin and purpose again, and tune in to mother nature’s constantly resonating healing frequency. There’s no doubt Wynne is a spiritual man, and it’s even less of a news flash that the band’s new album no longer surprises. It doesn’t surprise anymore, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it.
Quite the opposite. Everything is exactly as it should be, and exactly what you’d expect. If we glance back for a moment at the previous achievement “Technicians of the Sacred” (2015), a thoroughly excellent but also double studio album, “Space for the Earth” feels easier to follow thanks to its shorter running time. It feels more “focused” (which hardly means much in Ozric Tentacles’ case) and a little less guitar-driven, that is, not as pronounced in its phrasing. A gentler lead is taken by synths, sampling, looping, in other words, software “tinkering.” Electronics. Brilliant. The trippy atmosphere that carries you into the bosom of transcendence, which is what makes Ozric Tentacles unique by a mile, keeps all of its unusual provocativeness, tempting allure and hypnotic pull, even a demonic, fatal kind of thrill. This is once again an album you can simply enjoy. Exactly what Ed said above! Most of the loops and synth drapery come from Ed and his son Silas. On drums, the chief timekeeper Balázs Szende stays put. On the new album, Ozric Tentacles are officially a trio.
Stripey Clouds is rhythmic madness, richly woven with sub-rhythms and over-rhythms, a jumpy opener whose spontaneous vagueness somehow defines everything we mean by the words Ozric Tentacles in an instant. Popscape is one of the most fun moments on the album. The middle section in general, spiced up attractively with added Balkan motifs. It’s practically free of guitar leads, richly overgrown and interwoven with a whole series of varied software samples and sound-effect loops, so it’s only Ed’s guitar solo right before the end of the track that gently scratches at your ears. The intro entertains with the weirdest of sounds, reminiscent of stomach growling and robots debating, while Humboldt Currant, given its incredible motif leaps and yet seamless fluidity in linking them (rhythmic jumps included), is surely one of the strongest compositions on the new album.
This time around, a special feature and a strength of the album is its slightly nostalgic bent. “Spirals in Hyperspace” (2004) – remember Gala hala on November 10, 2004? – is considered the last battle cry of classic Ozric Tentacles in farewell, before they became the “Wynne family business.” Well, now that Ed and Brandi are no longer together, there was time again for old musical comrades to work together. So the flute on the title track belongs to the woodwind oddball John Egan, Paul Hankin is back with extra percussion and Joie Hinton with extra synths. There’s another legend too, a man who played with Wynne in Ozric Tentacles back in the eighties, drummer Nick Van Gelder. A reunion of the old crew, in other words. The title track is the point on the album that especially evokes that retro sound. It also has a “dub” rhythm woven in, popping up at just the right moment in just the right place.
Philosophizing is superfluous. Once again, this is an album where the whole thing could just as well be one single track. The recipe is well known, and the new Ozric Tentacles album “Space for the Earth” doesn’t deviate from it in the slightest. It’s hard to whistle this music on a walk, because with all that spontaneous formatting it’s impossible to remember, but once the album passes through your ears, it delivers a unique and unforgettable musical adventure. It’s another pearl that Ed Wynne has added to the other gems in the discography of one of the strangest bands ever to crawl around the solar galaxy. You could also call them the sweetest “instrumental-electronic-progressive-space-psychedelic-experimental-metal-world-music-rock” outfit. There, I’ve just said everything and nothing. “Space for the Earth” is a masterpiece that simply works, enchanting, unrepeatable and eclectic. Once more, then, and again. And precisely in the fact that it still stirs and moves the listener, even though the artistry no longer surprises, lies its big strength. A poker hand of aces that Wynne wins for himself again and again, so deftly, skillfully and wisely. Which is exactly why this kind of musical artistry, in all its weirdness and free spirit, is worth that much more.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Stripey Clouds (6:37)
2. Blooperdome (5:34)
3. Humboldt Currant (8:58)
4. Popscape (4:51)
5. Climbing Plants (7:05)
6. Space for the Earth (7:36)
7. Harmonic Steps (6:36)
Lineup:
Ed Wynne – guitar, programming, synths
Silas Wynne – synths
Balázs Szende – drums
Guests:
Joie Hinton – synths
Nick Van Gelder – drums
John Egan a ka “Champignon” – flute
Paul Hankin – percussion
Gracerooms – synths
