Outer Space - Akashic Record (Events: 1986-1990) (Vinyl LP)

Synths are so hot right now that it hurts to look at them, and Emerald John Elliott is making the most of this trend with this blistering LP of twinkly pulsating soundscapes with his latest synth team Outer Space. This is, Phil says, “the most cosmic thing I’ve heard this week”. He’s probably right about that although the Egyptology album on Desire/Clapping Music is pretty cosmic too. As far as pure unapologetic out-there vibes, though, you can’t do much better than this.

The first side opens with the ten-minute-long ‘Eclipse’, a soup of amorphous ambient tweaks and bloops and whooshes from gorgeous sounding synths which sent me into a proper spacey zone, and then second track ‘11:38’ (which is just over five minutes long) takes you out into the cosmos with its pulsing hypnotic modular bleeps, with a bit of a krauty Kosmonaut-esque feel. Wonderful stuff.

Flip it and unsurprisingly there’s more cosmic synth tastiness along very similar lines, with shuddering modular loops and trebly swoops and whooshes. This side’s got a sinister, propulsive feel to it which is reminding me of the excellent Barrow/Salisbury DROKK LP that came out a few weeks back. Little bit of Blade Runner, John Carpenter, ‘80s horror soundtrack vibe to it as well, even shades of Goblinesque panicky vibes, but it’s quite restrained and constantly pushing ahead, unlike the spacious and slow-paced opener. This stuff’s reminding me of Kosmonaut once again also, and it’s not miles away from Jonas Munk’s classy recent krautronic LP to my ears too.

Closer ‘February 8th, 1990 - Ashland, Ohio’ (recorded 2010/’11) takes us back into smooth astral gliding synth tones for a nice soft landing. This whole album sounds really clear and crisp and there’s a lot of detail and variety and to be quite honest with you it’s driving me nuts how many good records we’re getting this week because there’s no way I can buy them all!