Blue Worlds I

Following from 2016's "The Empty Atoms", the new deepspace album "Blue Worlds I" moves into glacial and minimal territory, evoking quiet and empty space, all tinged with the idea of blue-ness. From the outset of the 17 minute introductory pure dream of "Dark Dark Blue", a glacial pace is suggested, cautiously outlined by a solitary bass part. "Sky Elevator" is ambient muzak, a sound which appears in a few guises on this album- music which could be playing on an unmanned deck of an isolated starship, with no ears to hear it. The ultimate in lonely transmission. Here, we are in deep-spaces that are empty, clean and scientific: The blue sound of a vertical lift rising into the vagueness of a non-earth sky. 'Sinking into the Martini' could be a description of the guitars that colour the next piece: "Halcyon Flowering Seas"- this is all about submerging and disappearing into dreams and unrecognised beautiful worlds, real or unreal. "Fields of White Grass" moves in sepia, flying in half-time over un-natural fields of white grass that blind as they move slowly in the wind. "A Guess of Blue" borrows and transfigures a phrase from J.R.R Tolkien to evoke the fractal pastel beauty of the disappearing horizon. "City of the Blue Electron" imagines flying over a vast blue city. "Sublunary" is a beautiful word that suggests we live as animals under the moon. The piece is arctic in colour, and imagines the view down from the moon. "Walking Along Beneath Dark Skyscrapers" beguiles with dreamy guitars but then moves to darker ambient territory with textures reminiscent of 2009's "The Glittering Domain" to close the album.