Finite Space By Chris Meyer's Alias Zone

 

Finite Space

By

Chris Meyer's Alias Zone

Written by

Steve Sheppard

 

It has been a pleasure to spend a few hours in the far outer reaches of my musical galaxy with Finite Space by Chris Meyer's Alias Zone, it has somewhat restored my faith in long form electronic music whilst doing so, and kindly reminded me of some of the great albums that have passed my way on my journey through the tone and timbre of the space and electronic genres.

So we have a release with 4 tracks, three of those can be called long form with tracks ranging from 19 minutes plus, to just over 26 minutes, I can confirm now I got totally lost in this album, and a whole day could have gone past and I would have been stuck in the inner dimension of Chris’s Alias Zone, quite willingly.

The opening piece if a soft and delicate slice of space styled music mixed with a little global fusion, which added somewhat to the flavour and called is Premonition. This is a blissful place to start indeed, but it does however remind us of the fateful Apollo 13 mission, the spoken word audio from ground control spoke volumes, whilst the tension built with a subtle perception, akin to an ever growing storm on a darkening horizon.

There is so much to like on this next piece entitled Ash Tree Window, it is a vast creation of vibrant tones and colours, and shifts its aspects to create a swirling composition that has an addictive quality to its musical embrace. If you are like me and you’re old enough to remember the first cold war, you might remember listening to Soviet transmissions on the radio, contained within this composition one can be heard trying to contact a Russian space communications base, the electronic wizardry here reminds me greatly of the EM artist Dhyanam, mixed with the ambient structures of Laraaji and his 80’s Day of Radiance album.

We now drift into the continuum of Sputnik’s Ghosts, once more we look back to a month and a few days before I made it onto the planet in 1957, and the launch of the globes first Satellite by the USSR. This piece is beautifully crafted and contains a quite clever energy of expectation and wonderment, the flowing electronic tones and spoken word news audio all adds to the great drama of the piece, and flavours of Vangelis drift on the ambience of time within this marvellous long form opus of around 22 minutes.

The longest offering from the album is called Nightfall: Kyiv, today this song could have many connotations, here the artist with a little help from Ukrainian artist Maks Histibe and his field recordings of the current conflict explores them further, bringing the idiocy of war into a reality for those of us who it has never touched. It’s also at this point that we must tip the hat of respect to one Richard Bugg whose hyper acoustic flute adds such a beautiful distinction to the overall narrative. This is a deeply moving concluding musical creation, one that reminds us all of the most precious gift of life we all lead, and to be grateful for each day, each hour, or each minute of peace we can touch.

Finite Space by Chris Meyer's Alias Zone is a perfect example of top notch electronic music with an added twist of a global infused manifestation of sublime quality. This has to be the finest for me this year with ease, I defy anyone to press play on this album and not be totally immersed by the experience that follows.

Here is an album to step through the Stargate with, allow the senses to drift with the tones and timbre of each creative composition, and enjoy each bliss filled second as albums of this elk do not come around that often, as such one has to say that Finite Space is a total masterpiece of a release and it should indeed by the musical panacea to elate the hearts and minds of electronic music fans the globe over.