Beta-Lact.Ring Rec. Christus And The Cosmonaughts : From Atop This Hill (US,2007)***°
Front man and electronic wizard Scot Solida has available a lot of serious electronic music equipment which he also presents under the name of ‘The Electronic Garden’. Together with bass player Har, and special guests on this CD, Mike Weeks (2 tracks), John (Vurt) Wright (2 tracks), Wayne Cunningham (2 tracks) and Ant Graham (one track), this album was recorded.
It sounds partly like a song album with lots of room for a specific style mix of often sequenced electronic music, with bass, electric and for the song focus parts amplified guitar. Thematically the writer is influenced by science fiction that works as an escapism from harsh realities of some other time of being, and produced by the metaphor for this, the heavy machinery of electronic wizardy in a new, but rather dark rock context.
Although it has been said Legendary Pink Dots were not a too direct influence, especially the opener, “Beyond Belief” partly electronic arrangement, very much, so sound almost exactly like some unrecalled track I have heard from them, or at least from Edward Ka-Spel, an arrangement with rhythmically breathing effects of electronica and bass sounds with slower played guitars, as a carpet for the song. With growing rhythms on it, I am again reminded at a concert I once saw from the Legendary Pink Dots (in Utrecht, Holland, some years ago), that had an almost psychedelic effect on me. Also this track builds up like this concert, rhythmically, brooding, and additionally embedded with an electric guitar solo, some echoed stringed guitars and some other, for the track essential effects. The second track, like a chapter in a book, is more driven by a slightly sad song and its lyrics of disappointment. It has glockenspiel to it, and touches of a late Floydian kind of electric guitar. Next track is sequenced like speeded up cosmic music, mixed with electric guitars, almost with a threatening fast nature as if expressing someone trapped on a different planet with only a short timespan to survive. The track after this is more electropop styled : Scot Solida was influenced by Gary Newman in his early days, something which can be heard here. The content & sphere on it is not pop, but is much darker, enclosed in a darker spirit. The next song has moods that are built by electronic, strange soundscapes. “Nod if you were..” is much more heavy electropop. Its electric guitar goes more in the direction of Richard Pinhas/Heldon, so the association with Gary Newman here is out of the question. But then it finds a more catchy rhythm, within a dark “progressive” rock reach. The instrumental “Modulating..” is built from sequenced noise, tones and samples. The final track is a last song focus with guitar, but then with new directions with weird effects, electro-pop/rock with its own dark heaviness...
As a whole the album very much sound like a musical concept. Comparisons with Legendary Pink Dots are easily made, even when this is a world and expression on its own with a certain variety reaching towards its own influences in lyrical and musical themes.
Note : the LP version has less tracks.
