LIGHT YEARS

Between VANGELIS and the PETER BARDENS of Seen One Earth, the Lituanian genius behind the nick Stellardrone justifies his name. Don't search for drums. This album is purely made of electronics. You are in a spaceship and the greatness of the Cosmos fills your soul of melancholy. Remove the ethnic vocals and the choirs from OLDFIELD's Song Of Distant earth, this is what I mean.

We have to wait for Cepheid, track number 6 to hear some electronic drums in a track that reminds also to ALAN PARSONS Project.

Ok, stop comparing him with other artists. Eternity and Airglow are pure beauty, but my favorite track is Comet Halley. The tracks don't exceed in length and most of all, are not made of electronic noises only like you can find in the music of the prolific PHROZENLIGHT. There are chords and melodies. The near-absence of rhythm is due to the space mood. Ultra Deep Field brings you to the most remote abyss explored by the Hubble telescope, Astronaut voices in the reprise of Eternity The travel ends on M45, the Pleiads, the seven sisters. not the Motorway to Coventry. It's apity that it ends fading out, but in this case it gives an idea of "suspension". The space travel doesn't end, probably never ends. Only the album is gone, but there are 7 more on Bandcamp to enjoy.

One of the best artists that I've discovered in 2015. For dreaming.

One of the most difficult subgenres of music to review, in my opinion, is Progressive Electronic. The differentiating characteristics of each song and artist are dependent on variations of tempo, instrument choice (such as the use of 'drum/percussives'), and But the moods so often conveyed through Progressive Electronic soundscapes are usually either floating/ethereal or traveling/driven, without much variation from the two. Thus, I have found myself hesitant to do many PE reviews--especially song-by-song, movement-by-movement reviews. A lot of what I hear is, of course, rendered into categories according to who they sound like (to me). Yet, there is an awful lot of Progressive Electronic music that I have grown to love. I want, therefore, to be able to extoll the praises of these albums in order to promote the artists creating the beauty from which I and others can so benefit. The act of trying to put a review into words just feels intimidating, even daunting. Perhaps I just need to find another, more creative way of using words. Stellardrone is the name that Lithuanian artist Edgaras ?akevičius has been using to release self-published music over the past ten years. While Edgaras' output has been at a fairly pleasing level from the start, it feels to me that until this album, Light Years, each of the Stellardrone albums has provided me with a bit of a rollercoaster ride--a lot of great songs pitted with the valleys of some weaker ones--songs that feel underdeveloped or 'cheesy' in their simplicity or in the choice of computer synthesized sounds chosen therein. Light Years is the first Stellardrone album that I absolutely love start to finish. There is no song-skipping here, no weak songs, only shifts in dynamics and speed, evocations of dreaminess or movement and adventure.

Five star songs: 1. "Red Giant" (3:15) (9/10); 2. "Airglow" (5:16) (10/10); 3. "Eternity" (6:21) (10/10); 4. "Light Years" (6:04) (10/10); "Comet Halley" (3:42) (9/10); 8. "Ultra Deep Field" (5:44) (10/10), and; 9. "Eternity (Reprise)" (3:33) (10/10).

Four star songs: 5. "In Time" (3:47) (8/10); 6. "Cepheid" (4:32) (8/10), and; 10. "Messier 45" (2:26) (8/10).

An album of beautiful music which does a wonderful job of provoking emotional and visual responses. Truly a masterpiece of modern electronica.