Home Artist links

Foreign Spaces - Phaeton

Artist:	Foreign Spaces
Title:	Phaeton
Label:	self produced ISCD 020007
Length(s):	71 minutes
Year(s) of release:	2000
Month of review:	[07/2001]

Line up

Georg Reiter - keyboards?
Lothar Lubitz - keyboards?
Christian Feher - keyboards?

Tracks

1)	Phaeton I - Planet	17.40
2)	Blue Stream	4.38
3)	Moonless	4.06
4)	Silver Glider	3.17
5)	Phaeton II - Lifeforms	21.18
6)	Spheric Architecture	5.16
7)	Articifical Encounter	7.23
8)	White Sunset	3.44
9)	Phaeton III - Utopia	4.17

Summary

With three other titles under their belt, this the .... fourth with recordings from 1998-2000.

The music

The album opens with Phaeton I - Planet. Over seventeen minutes of Tangerine Dream oriented electronic music (and in a good way) with plenty of high. Lots of repetition in the melody lines, giving the music is a rather relaxed feel. The sound does get fuller and fuller, but continues to be rather spacey. The end sounds a bit sad in a way notwithstanding the long high sounds on the keyboards. Kind of a wailing effect.

Blue Stream has a bit of everything. It opens well with strong loop and over that lots of variation. The track has both some mellow, some screamy and some triumphant aspects.

After a dreamy but percussive opening Moonless has quiet subdued sequencing and again a lot fof high in the music. The music has something of desert music, but the melodies are bit boring.

Lighter and more optimistic is Silver Glider. The melody is okay, but it is based on this one single theme. On the other hand, the long Phaeton II - Lifeforms has plenty of those, strung together as so many hams. Actually this track is really fragmentary, some themes are okay, some are not which is a shame. The bad themes always win.

Again nice melodies on Spheric Architecture, but the sound of the album is by now familiar. Little is added to it. Or maybe the guitar like opening to Articifical Encounter, which has some melodic aspects of Twelfht Night's Creepshow (must be accidental). A bit bouncy this one. After the spooky White Sunset we conclude with the strong Phaeton III - Utopia has a strong melody, is concise and is really a electronic composition.

Conclusion

Although the level of Tangerine Dream is never obtained, there is nothing really simple or easy about the music of Foreign Spaces. In fact, this is rather serious spacey electronic music, not original anything, but certainly not bad either. Compared to Imagination-Pictures-Music this album is much more consistent, although the high points of IPM I think I liked better. What I did and do lack in the music is a bit emotion. The triggered drums and the choice of sounds make the music come over quite cold.