ARACHNOID

This late-1970s self-titled release from Parisian unit Arachnoid finds the band walking a spidersilk-thin tightrope, on the one hand juggling dark zeuhl and avant-prog influences whilst the other crafts the music into a more accessible (but no less ambitious) tapestry of symphonic space rock. You have the hypnotic chants and intonations of zeuhl combining with cosmic overtones that, whilst not absent from the zeuhl playbook, feels much more in line with the work of symphonic French bands like Pulsar or Ange, all taking place under a shroud of darkness that could have come from the deepest depths of Van der Graaf Generator. Wild, daunting stuff.