NEW AGE OF EARTH

Progressive electronic is a great genre. Often, the musicians responsible for the albums are masters of building up a slowly shifting piece of music, full of beautiful and/or haunting textures and sounds. As Epignosis said in his review of Tangerine Dream's album Phaedra, it's often incredibly hard to describe the music. So many albums from the genre feel so familiar to me, yet at the same time so alien. That is a big part of the reason why I've always been drawn to it since discovering it - ever since I was young I've been fascinated by space and science fiction, and the 70s electronic whizzes are really the closest thing I've ever heard to space/science fiction in music.

Some albums are deep space, exploring the very fabric of the universe (TD's Zeit), while others, such as this one, seem to meander about the solar system, maybe taking a trip to the center of the galaxy to see the sights, but never too far away. While I absolutely love Zeit for its exploration of the unknown, I love this one (to a slightly lesser degree) for the way much of it seems to float along; it seems to me a musical representation of being in zero gravity at times, just a nice relaxed feeling, totally at ease with itself. While a lot of my favorites from the genre are dark and moody albums, this one is more "happy" sounding, content to develop at its own pace and let everyone else be themselves around it.

One of the most important things for me regarding prog electronic is the ability to be mesmerized by the music I hear...this one does that very well. It's a great album to listen to through headphones in a dark room, and just let your mind wander where it will. As most (all?) of the others have mentioned, this one is entirely Manuel Göttsching's baby - I prefer his guitar work, but this is still an amazing album; electronic bliss, as FruMp said. This album has gotten quite a lot of spins from me over the past year, it's great for any time you want to chill out. I'm very torn as far as a rating goes though - I love it, so I want to give it 5 stars, but I don't think it's quite at the same level as many of my favorites from the genre, so I'll stick with 4 stars...for now. In a world with half stars, it would be 4.5.