FROM BONE TO SATELLITE

Generally seen as their more accessible album, From Bone To Satellite is the album that introduced me to Tarentel and while discovering GYBE!'s first two releases, they were my first introduction to Post rock, a term (and style) that was only beginning to stem bnack in those years. I remember thinking of Tortoise's debut album as their closest cousin or influence. Also remember being somewhat fascinated with the beautiful inside artwork (the outside artwork is not bad either, but must be seen in real size) and how it meshed so well with the ambiance of the music. Of course now some 8 years later, this kind of album has been many times duplicated, copied, plagiarized and devalued the music present on here.

Out of all of Tarentel's records (the ones I heard anyway), this one might just be the only one that justifies their reputation of being influenced by Floyd, and much of it has to do with the grandiose leadoff track Steede Bonnet. With the almost violent We Almost Killed Ourselves, the album soon plunges in a more traditional post rock, but one that was definitely still groundbreaking back then. Ursa Major is the perfect follow-up but would've gained from being more concise. For Carl Sagan is a more reflective and repetitive number, which might have been a few minutes shorter for its own good. Strange Attractors is the great closer starting out on a slow crescendo, but suddenly dropping to an intimate climate then almost a full stop, lovingly staying alive through weak percussions than all a sudden exploding with an unsuspected violence, narrowingly escaping auto-implosion on a couple occasion before finding itself drifting/space-trucking outside of the Milky Way until its slow death.

Retrospectively, this is probably not the most inventive album of Tarentel, but certainly the one that gave them enough confidence to soldier on to make other beauties such as We Move Through Weather. A fitting intro to Tarentel, this might be more accessible than their newer albums, but it is quite less obtuse as well, even ifs extreme length (a whopping 74 minutes) is not its best asset.