artists: Various
title: Retrophonica – Aestheric Transmissions
keywords: experimental Lancashire
label: Wormhole World
“Retrophonica – Aetheric Transmissions is a charity compilation curated by John from Sound Effects Of Death And Horror (SEODAH) along with 12 other artists to celebrate the work of Delia Derbyshire, Wendy Carlos and other electronic pioneers. Each artist has created a track using 60/70’s sounds as a starting point. They include classical pieces and original works in a wide variety of styles and sounds that fit together well.”
Let’s get the official narrative out of the way and dive in to all the goodness that this compilation has to offer:
Roberta Fidora – Like Clockwork
mysterious, royal and elegant; these are the words that shoot to mind as Roberta Fidora’s ‘Like Clockwork’ is playing and doing its tricks in my ears. When I close my eyes, I see images of gothic castle grounds in which princesses are running around the towers and princes are hobbling around in their fancy costumes. There might be some Kings and Queens, an evil godfather, a dragon of some kind & a bunch of loyal knights tingling the alarm bells of the highest tower too. It’s like listening to a story that I don’t have the words for.
Sick Robot – Deep Thought
The scenery of this compilation changes a lot as visions of Donna Summer singing her hit ‘What is love’ fill up my imagination. I have deep thoughts about this epic given vision and solidly thank Sick Robot’s sound choice and style for generating them. However Donna herself isn’t present & also the disco seems to be closed (I don’t think the Corona virus has anything to do with it). Still this vibe of ‘feeling love’ is there and it’s highly electric as well. I can feel it twinkling around and appreciate every minute of this retrophonica.
Elizabeth Joan Kelly – Metro Musix
Things move on into a strange seductive time traveling zone, one in which an old school train rattles over the tracks and the landscape is presumably all made out of electronic memorability. You can hear the birthplace of drone, the early BBC synth basement experimentational vibes, the electric joyfulness of truly re innovating music as it had always existed before.
Rupert Lally – Pachelbel’s Canon Lies Broken On The Ground
The road down classic retro memory lane land hasn’t left just yet, but has become a monumental sit-in of wonderfulness in melody and sound-design-form. Here we early synth lovers mumble away in satisfying happiness, sucking our thumbs like happy toddlers who get their very first glimpse of the synth sound delivered to their ears. I remember how exciting and how much wonderful colors it created & how easily it chose to always live inside of us freaks.
Petridisch – Le Sacre du Printemps – Danse Sacrale
Things change immediately when Petridisch comes in, transforming the environment into one in which you can peek in the practice of a mad dentist and its colorful customers. They open up their mouths and let their ‘aaaahs’ of dental tensions spread out in order to form a fanatic choir of pleasurable pains. You can imagine the old school dentist rubbing its hands as he or she smiles behind a surgical mask; the patient voices expressing themselves in the dentist chair are like an orchestral masterpiece that certainly feels like music to the ears.that we all had been waiting for!
Alan Morse Davies – Deo Gratias
A monumental break that licks our wounds, strokes our fears away with the pleasant sine waves that will make us all feel loved up, warm and authentically leaving our ears buzzing and ringing wonderfully for a permanent bit of love-music making in the retro-way. What is not to love over here? The colors of the music, the melody – these vibes will stay burned into your head and you will wear it like a proud tattoo!
The Central Office Of Information – Leisure Time
Now it’s time to have some good leisure entertainment – the retro way. Things get that vibe of open minded explorer synthesis, sounds are electric and dusty, crunching in the ear like an experiment of a scientist that had built its own synthesizers from materials that this central office of information must have read upon in some handy books.
Flying Pyjamas – Lover’s Wine
Flying Pyjamas are making us lovingly drunk over here, easily sinking into this pleasurable state as if it’s placed into our veins like a prescribed shot of medicinal drugs injected by a professional in the underground music business. A voice of delirious fantasy screws with our mind, restoring the paradise of electric galore in which things go berserk, little loopy and yet fanatically together. Shall we dance, pull our hairs out, cut our nails, wobbly around like an excited ball of energy?
St James Infirmary – Toccata in D Minor
St. James Infirmary gives us the epic melody of the grandly manic Toccata in D Minor; expect instant climaxing orgasms to all who love retro synthesizer music; you won’t keep it dry! An orgasmic delight in D Minor lays ahead and even less exciting listeners might feel it somewhere dangling! It’s pretty exciting, isn’t it?
The Home Current – Let Ur Charm Inundate All
Here things lean sufficiently on the bass of kindness, superbly rounded – simplified perfectness. Think of tea cups twinkling around in harmonious harmony. Electric blazers honking away while clean cut synth strings and piano sparkles dance with each other for a moment of one-on-one ballroom bliss. Very charming indeed!
mzungu – Within Dreams
Here we slip into the more soundtrack-kind-of-vine, one in which poetry words slip through about a house made out of peacock feathers and someone being bendy & other dada-ist nonsense. It’s a dream within a dream in which explains the idiocy over here wordwize, audio style it’s like an expert diving into that side of the sleepy state; one in which calm things pulsate and calm watery recordings slip through.
Newlands – Soave Maria
Oh, and this is… wonderful. A livelong retrospective look of wonderful music which I believe would make Delia Derbyshire smile upon us from heaven. Things are sweet and full of love, the right sounds, the perfect melody to carry them; might this be the kind of music that will turn the world into a peaceful one, one day?
Sound Effects Of Death And Horror – The Menace Of Terror
Here we dive into a darker realm, sniffing up nightmares created in the psychedelic realm of electronica noise; one in which the counting towards a lift off won’t set a rocket into the air, but descends deep into an synth galore of authentic retro spiciness. One in which telephone modems form the birds, the thickest bass sounds the warm palette of emotion and mellow sound tones become the tear jerkers to play around with your mood. It’s an epic and graciously embodiment of what this compilation seemed to be all about: Aestheric Transmission!
https://wormholeworld.bandcamp.com/album/retrophonica-aetheric-transmissions
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Yeah I Know It Sucks 