COSMIC GROUND 5

I haven't listened to electronics for a while so this was a treat. COSMIC GROUND is the one man project of Dirk Jan Muller from Germany and he is also the leader and keyboardist for spacerockers ELECTRIC ORANGE. COSMIC GROUND has been his vehicle for delivering electronics to the world since 2014 and includes eight studio albums so far. This is his fifth from 2019 and besides sequencers and synths we get some bass, mellotron, string ensemble and farfisa organ. I always say give me some organic sounds when it comes to electronics and this record delivers that. The cover front and back and picture inside are all dark with a green hue, they have a sense of mystery about them.

This is a long one at over 75 minutes over eight tracks and this recording has a uniform sound to it and I like it. The short opener "Sludge" is awesome and a top three as we get atmosphere galore as my speakers vibrate along with some banging sounds. "Misery" is another top three and one I liked right from the first spin. A ton of atmosphere that hovers and after 3 minutes the mellotron is pretty great. "Delusion" is the other top three and I just noticed these three are the three shortest on the album and it's unusual for me to pick the short ones as favourites.

"Delusion" is an incredible soundscape of synths as Jan amps it up then settles it back over the 7 1/2 minutes. I did find that there's a lot of repetitive music on here especially with those longer pieces like the longest of all "Operation:Echo" at over 18 minutes. Three tracks are fairly heavy on the sequencers but this is truly soundscape music for the most part that is on the darker side.

A solid 4 stars for this stormy nighttime release.