STEVE MAXWELL VON BRAUND: MONSTER PLANET

This album deserves credit for being probably the first album of the progressive electronic genre to be recorded in Australia. It is a highly experimental effort. The two tracks that make up the bulk of the album, "Shadowfax" and "Spirit", are solo efforts for synthesizer and, although some subtle melodic construction is detectable, both highly abstract in their sound worlds. "Crystal Forest" is similarly abstract despite the incorporation of a more organic instrumental element in the form of Henry Vynhal's electric violin. The title track is therefore quite out of character with the rest of the album, with it's more conventional (indeed limited to one chord) tonal language and it's heavier use of conventional instruments (drums, bass & saxophone) and vocals, although the synthesizer contributions that open and close the piece are just as abstract as the rest of the album. It reminds me somewhat of some of the earliest avant-garde compositions for tape written in the 1950s - much exploration of sound for it's own sake, much reliance on the novelty of the sounds, but at least on initial listening not much evidence of a strong compositional language. Still a very original effort, better than his later work with Cybotron