Albums
One record at a time, in depth. Not reviews.
Heaven and Hell
Vangelis called the studio he was still building Hell. The 1975 record he made in six weeks on that building site, and the four minutes Carl Sagan's Cosmos took from it.
Spiral
The first Vangelis record with the Yamaha CS-80, a synthesizer that weighs close to a hundred kilos. A 1977 album with a line of the Tao Te Ching on its sleeve, and the unlikely place one of its tracks ended up.
Albedo 0.39
On the last track, the recording engineer reads out the numbers of the Earth. Vangelis's 1976 space record, every instrument his own, drums included, and what became of the number in its title.
Les Chants Magnétiques
A French pun that loses half of itself in English. The 1981 record where a Fairlight sampled trains and cogwheels, and the door it opened into China.
Équinoxe
Jarre wanted to throw out a cassette sketch. Michel Geiss talked him out of it, and it became Part 7. A 1978 record that follows one day from waking to sleep.
Oxygène
An album that sold eighteen million copies got some of its beat from two rhythm-box buttons held down with sticky tape. Jarre's kitchen record from Paris.
Silver Cloud
In 1983 the obi counted four years from Oasis. Recorded in a Nagano workroom, sixteen instruments, one name: Kitaro at the peak of his Japanese years.
Oasis
In 1979 the sales copy on this record named its cover painter before its musician. Kitaro's third album, made alone in a Kamakura workroom.
Silk Road
In the spring of 1980 a documentary composer insisted his music go out in stereo. That demand made the record, and it made Kitaro.
Mirage
January 1977: two pieces with no drums and no driving sequencers, subtitled an electronic winter landscape. The winter Schulze set the beat down.
Moondawn
A Moog bought from Florian Fricke three days before Christmas, and drummer Harald Grosskopf. Frankfurt, January 1976: Schulze's pulse becomes a beat.
Timewind
One night in June 1975, thirty minutes recorded in a single take in the space of two hours. Schulze's first record with a sequencer, and his dedication to Wagner.
Ricochet
The sleeve says live. More than half of it was rebuilt in a studio. Tape from the autumn 1975 tour became two pieces and thirty-eight minutes.
Rubycon
A year after Phaedra the same three men went back to the same country house. The power kept failing. The most complete record they ever made.
Phaedra
Calling it a classic undersells it. The record that gave the Berlin School its sound: a country house, a Moog that drifted, a tape left running.