NODE LIVE

They may have only released two albums in more than ten years of existence, but synth supergroup Node have a very strong reputation indeed, so when they decided to perform a rare concert in London in 2015 why not do it at the Royal College of Music? I'm pretty sure I've not come across another live album from those hallowed halls, and have not even seen a concert advertised, so I doubt if they have ever had so many vintage and modular synthesizers on stage before this! The four members of Node (Flood, Ed Buller, Dave Bessell and Mel Wesson) refuse to use backing tracks, and everything had to be manually tuned and set up, a task that took all those involved (including the crew) a full day to complete.

Then it was just the matter of getting onstage and let the music take them where they wished. The resulting album consists of four edits from the concert, plus a bonus piece from rehearsals. This is very much from the Berlin School style of synthesiser music, heavily influenced indeed by Tangerine Dream, so much so that one could easily believe that this is a recording by that band (particularly if one hasn't really studied their output, such as myself). The music is layered and condensed in such a way that it is hard to hear how many hands are generating the sounds at any particular time, or what is coming from where, it becomes an amorphous mass where the music is a living, breathing being. It is very easy to get lost inside the music, to be take on new journeys and adventures, and I would imagine that many people at the concert sat there with their eyes closed to ensure that nothing disturbed the aural majesty being played in front of their ears. The album has been released in a limited edition run of just 2000 copies, and if this is your style of music then you really do need to grab this quick.