Search - Lightwave, Christoph Harbonnier, Paul HASLINGER :: Tycho Brahe

Great space music (with moments of tension and resolution)

J. Davis | Columbia, SC USA/Tokyo, Japan | 04/25/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I first ran across Lightwave's music in 2002-3 when listening to one of the Internet radio stations that plays space music. I enjoyed the pieces I heard and found the CD on Amazon. If you are familiar (and like) both Tangerine Dream (the earlier pre-Virgin 70s releases) and Klause Schulze's 70's work, you'll like this album. It is atonal in places, like Dream and Schulze, with a moving soundscape that carries you through various moods. It is also reminiscent of Michael Stearn's early 80's (namely "Encounter") and some of Steve Roach's work. If you are familiar with these "new age" space music composers, you'll know that the work has lots of ambience to it (particularly considering Roach's more recent Projeckt releases. It is not like the Roach work such as "Structures from Silence" or "Quiet Music" (more like Streams and Currents and the Infinite Void). It is also not like recent space music compisitions like the Chuck Wild "Liquid Mind" series of soundscapes.



First cut, "Uraniborg" is very much in the style of Schulze, using violin as the main voicing instrument with brooding synths wafting in and out, and between L & R channels. It also shares some of the brooding of Roach's work on "Streams and Currents". It shares some common elements with Jonn Serrie's more brooding work, sans purcussion.



Second Piece, "Mapping the Sky" is more like Serrie's space music, or like David Lange's "Return of the Comet" in places, with airy wisps of strings and of a light acoustic piano melody. However, Lightwave doesn't rely on major chord structures behind a meoldy as much a Lange did on his Comet album pieces. The work is more atonal in the Roach vein (Projeckt 2000's work).



3rd, Cathedral, slightly atonal, in the vein of Schulze and TaDream. Strings/violin and main voice, as Schulze, with pulsating backdrop of synth bass, like TaDReams' "Zeit" in places, which doesn't follow a rhythm per se.



The other pieces are variations on these motifs. The approach is unique, but if you know the work of Klause Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, Jonn Serrie... you get the idea of what type of music this is. Since Amazon doesn't have any sample of the music, you can't hear it. So, my review has focused on what the music sounds like, not how I rave about it. If you like these other guys, you'll like this ambient soundscape of really interesting space music. Enjoy!



The pieces and lengths (not on this page) are:



1. Uraniborg 17:03

2. Mapping the Sky 4:56

3. Cathedral 5:24

4. Fuga Stellarum 4:39

5. Virtual Mechanics 4:02

6. Poetics of the Sphere 4:21

7. Art of Clockmaskers 3:59

8. Tycho on the Moon 6:15

9. Apoqee 4:02

10. Hymn for the Guild of Astronomers 3:36"