PARALLEL WORLD

Imagine Gong eschewing their zany brand of psyched-out humour and teaming-up with Tangerine Dream and you have 1976's 'Parallel Worlds', the third album from legendary Japanese group Far East Family Band. And the Tangerine Dream link is not a tenuous one either; keyboardist and drummer Klaus Schulze, who appeared on Tangerine Dream's debut album 'Electronic Meditation before quitting the group and turning into one of the foremost innovators of early electronica, produced 'Parallel Worlds', lending his sonic signature sounds - ethereal synth washes, strange bleeps, mystical clicks and whirrs, primitive keyboard effects - to Far East Family Band's highly-psychedelic brand of cosmic rock. It would mark Schulze's second stint as producer for the group, his first coming a year earlier on the 'Nipponjin' album, but this time his influence appears much more pronounced. The album is made up of just four lengthy tracks, with the final, album-titled piece clocking in at the thirty-minute mark and featuring all the hallmarks of Schulze's early albums, as well as some intensely-trippy jamming from the band that drifts almost aimlessly through the space-rock haze without ever resorting to mundane repetition. 'Nipponjin' found the group attempting to hone and develop their prog/psych sound; 'Parallel World's' perfected it. Fans of Yatha Sidhra's 'A Meditation Mass', Tangerine Dream's 'Alpha Centauri' and 'Phaedra', Schulze's own material and Gong's 'You' should find this blissed-out slice of cosmic psychedelia right up their street. STEFAN TURNER, LONDON, 2011