VOYAGE

Warning: If you own the Purple Pyramid CD reissue of Voyage, you actually own Adventure, as both albums were accidentally swiped when reissued. So the review Im doing here goes actually to the real Voyage, which would be Adventure if you own the CD.

So, with an totally unchanged lineup of Joel Vandroogenbroeck, Barney Palm, Hans Deyssenroth, and Wilhelm Seefeldt, they recorded another album together, in February 1982. While Adventure was recorded during several sessions between May 1979 and January 1980 (and you can tell that, because music on there often had several abrupt changes), Voyage was all recorded all in one night, all improvised (it even states: "There were no rehearsals. We let the music flow out of our hands. We hope you enjoy it"). That's easy to believe, given there don't appear to be as much abrupt change as was on Adventure. To be honest, Voyage didn't quite left my mind blown the way of Adventure, but I still found it very enjoyable. At a time Duran Duran inflicted us with Rio (and that video of some lady wearing a purple plastic bag dress and the Duran Duran guys on a yacht), Joel Vandroogenbroeck seemed totally unaware of the changes, the music is still firmly in the '70s progressive electronic vein. Lots of clavinet, electric piano, Moog, with a more experimental bent than Adventure. Lots of gamelan and other percussion still used. There are some calm moments as well as some really tripped out moments. Listening to this, you'd think it came out in the late '70s. None of the keyboardists seem to come anywhere near a Prophet 5 or an OBXa, sticking to the trusted mid '70s stuff.

Bonus tracks (that is, the CD to Adventure, even though that's not the correct album), once again, of unknown origin. Joel Vandroogenbroeck, by this point, had released a ton of library music albums on Coloursound, but they weren't available to the general public (available to television, radio, and production companies interested), and only with the coming of the Internet had these albums been made aware of to the general public. None of these bonus cuts came from any of these albums. "Machinery (Analog 1970)" isn't from 1970. I'm guessing 1983 (after Voyage), sounds like Joel Vandroogenbroeck finally started including some early '80s polyphonic synths (sounds like an Oberheim OBXa) but the old '70s stuff like the clavinet are still being used. This one is more aggressive than "Skyline (Analog 1970)" (from the CD of Voyage, which is actually Adventure). "3 Worlds" is a really strange piece that goes through three changes. "Robotika" is a strange, percussive mechanical piece, appropriate for such a title.

This era of Brainticket is quite underrated. To me, this is how I wished the early '80s were like, not the era of MTV and Duran Duran. Given Joel Vandroogenbroeck was in his 40s at that time, it's obvious he had no use for stuff like that (his background was jazz, but he was open to the psychedelic and space rock scene of the early '70s, as well as world music, like gamelan), and gladly carried on like the '70s were still happening. His library albums after 1982 did show that he started adjusting to the times by including digital synthesizers (as well as the bonus cuts on both the CDs of Adventure and Voyage).

So if the review doesn't make sense, remember that the albums were accidentally switched when reissued on CD. I should know, years after I bought the CDs, I bought the original LPs, which cleared up a whole lot of confusion for me.

Really, Voyage is worth having but I felt Adventure is better.