Five tracks, each in a different style. The title track is an improvised live studio performance, one take, no editing, no overdubs, no keyboards! Just three step sequencers manually played, triggering three rack-synth modules. For technophiles, it's made up of twenty-nine patterns ranging from one to eight steps and is an affectionate nod to Chris Franke, Michael Hoenig and Manuel Gottsching - masters of the Berlin School genre as well as minimalists such as Steve Reich.
'Lime Heart' is the nearest I get to an instrumental 'pop song'. It was once titled 'Coruscation' and was going to be the title track of that album.
'Shocked Quartz' was the hardest track to mix. There's a lot going on in there!
'Approaching Sedna'. In the not too distant future, an alien craft is travelling towards Sedna, happily chattering away....
'Beyond Sedna'. slingshot!..communications cease... an alien dying...
or is it my death..?
Discovered in 2003, Sedna is a large red planetoid in the outer reaches of the Solar System, three times further from the Sun than Neptune. If you think it can get cold in Scotland ( -23 C in Braemar, February 2021), Sedna doesn't get warmer than -240 C and "summer" comes only once every 11,800 years.
Digital download release: 12 February 2021.
All profits on this release will go to Parkinson's UK charity.
Composed, played and recorded by Peter Beasley at Painting the Moon Studios, London, November 2020 to January 2021. Produced by Peter Beasley for Metalbottle Records.
METBOT120221
released February 12, 2021
Peter Beasley - Reason DAW, sequencers, keyboards, percussion
www.facebook.com/metalbottle
PETER BEASLEY – The Tree That Wished To Dance Album review by Andy Gee, Inkeys.
I've known Peter as a musician for nigh on 40 years and right from the first cassette release, “Coruscation”, known that here was a guy who could “do the Berlin School” style of synth music, way better than any of his solo compatriots at the time. Now, all these years later, this release confirms just that with a stunning affirmation of the guy's talent.
The title track, nearly 30 minutes in length, opens with a plethora of solid, traditional, seventies-styled sequencer lines, all driving forward, soaring up and down the scale, ebbing and flowing, but always with that familiar throb so beloved of a band such as T Dream on albums like “Rubycon” and “Ricochet”. Yes, it's been done before, but there's something really special about the way this guy does it, a heart beating away behind the rhythms from outer space. Now, you may be expecting me to continue the review of this track, by going on about the tunes, melodies, cosmic backdrops, synth undercurrents, etc – only I can't – because there aren't any.......yep, this is a near 28 minute sequencer track!! “But that's gotta be boring”, I hear you cry........well, no, actually, not in this guy's hands.
In the rich traditions of TD, he's kept their familiar trademark about not letting anything repeat itself, as the rhythms are changing shape all the time the track travels inexorably onwards, but he's effectively stripped it all down and cut out anything that isn't rhythmic, and managed to come up with the unheard of feat of producing a spellbinding epic, based purely around rhythm, something that artists like Glass and Reich did, but at the snail's pace at which they changed their musical landscapes, in Beasley's case, a whole lot more effective.
After this amazing epic track, come three shorter ones - “Lime Heart” is a three and a half minute track that manages to sandwich in sequencers at a slower pace, electronic percussion that's neat and chunky, a soaring melody line and a track that expresses in three minutes, everything that TD did on tracks such as “Choronzon” and the like, to which this bears a welcome musical similarity.
The five and a half minute “Shocked Quartz” is his chance to show his cosmic side as a rhythm-free 2 minute intro sets the space scene before a mix of this soaring slice of cosmic bliss is joined by an electro-percussive rhythm and underlying, more distant, sequencers as the track bounces along its merry way, with melodies and soundscapes deep in the heart of the track which builds beautifully from its simple beginnings, into a track that could almost be a guitar-less Harmonia in action.
Next up is the 6 minute “Approaching Sedna”. Now this track is cosmic – with a vengeance!!! It's so silent that you can barely discern the glimmerings and electronic communications that are coming from the outer reaches of the universe, but it's absolutely riveting, a bit like hearing the sounds of musical life coming from a galaxy thousands of light years away. A minute and a half before the end, it becomes louder – as signs of life are beyond doubt, still cosmic, still at the furthest musical reaches of space and time, with sudden bursts of sonic life that end very abruptly.
The final track on the album is the follow-up track, “Beyond Sedna”, and, at nearly ten and a half minutes long, it moves into view courtesy of gently swaying sequencers, a beautiful space synth river, slowly building electronic atmospherics and implied melody lines at the heart of everything, a slice of blissful electronic gorgeousness that slowly progresses, builds and develops, while always maintaining its cosmic gaze on the universe.
Overall, it's an absolutely stunning album of essentially “analogue” synth tracks, arguably the best album, the seventies never had, and with all profits from its release going to Parkinsons UK Charity, there's absolutely no excuse not to buy this.
