Short Reviews [Star Control - 2018 - "Mark I"]

I was at a gig last year, and while the bands were sound checking I realised that Felix Lun was also there. I remembered Felix from the excellent Shepherds of Cassini who I had reviewed years earlier, so we soon started chatting and of course I asked him what was happening with the band. Apparently, bassist Vitesh Bava had moved away so they had gone on hiatus, but would I be interested in going to see a totally different project he had created with Shepherds drummer Omar Al-Hashemi and another musician, David Somervell? So off I went to Wine Cellar to see a band which I can only describe as being quite different to anything else I had witnessed, in that David and Felix both play keytars in an instrumental band while they had set up a games console so people could play really old computer games which were projected onto a screen behind the band. I knew Felix as a violinist, and Shepherds as a progressive band, so this was certainly quite different. This of course led to me being sent their debut album, which came out in 2018. Apparently, it is available in a deluxe version, where the purchaser gets a USB drive which contains shareware games and lots of other goodies, including a colouring-in book! I have reviewed many thousands of albums over the last 30 years or so, but I cannot remember that being a giveaway with any of them. The concept behind the album is that each song should be treated as the theme to an imaginary movie, e.g., final track “Moonrise” is to evoke the feeling of walking home in the rain through deserted imaginary streets. We even get some words on “Robot Cop”, and there is a very strong feeling of Eighties multi-instrumentalist music. What makes a huge difference though is the drumming of Omar, as his input takes this to the next level. It shows just how transformative it can be for this style of music to have a real drummer involved who is driving the melody as much as the keyboard players as opposed to a machine to just keep a beat. This adds further drama to the music, which although layered synths and no other instruments already has plenty, and the result is an album which is far more reminiscent of Tangerine Dream that I would have expected. The sounds being utilised are wonderfully dated, and this never feels like a modern release but rather one which came out nearly 40 years ago. This will be of interest to those who want their electronic music to have direction and purpose without ever dropping into dance mode.