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Ohead: Decade in Space/Dream State Circus
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HeadLab Records (HLB-CD-02/HLB-CD-04)
  Ohead is a project of English musician/producer Dave Hendry making spacey, mainly electronic music that has elements of trance, space rock, ambient as well as dub. Other strong influences are old school German electronic pioneers like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze. Hendry has earlier on played mostly drums in space rock and heavy metal bands which, I guess, also has left its mark on Ohead’s music. He first started making electronic music in the form of psy-trance as Transequence. It the studio he plays and programs most of the music by himself but there are also occasional guests like in the band’s live line-up. Ohead has been operating for more than ten years now and released several albums some of which have been favorably reviewed at Psychotropic Zone too.
Decade in Space celebrates the first ten years of released Ohead material (1998-2008). Instead of just putting together a compilation album Hendry decided to rather re-record all the tracks. This was a very good idea since that way they sound fresh and he got the chance to fix things that he was not totally happy with as well as add bits and pieces here and there. Great! The CD includes nine mostly long tracks and only some of them were known to me before. One of my personal favorites is the hypnotic “Seamless Time” that uncommonly also includes vocals. The pretty heavy electric guitar gives a nice space rock feel although the bass drum beats in the dance music mode while sequencers blast away. This track features Gazbo on guitar. One other track (“Dub Bubble”) also has a guest musician: Spacey Rach plays saxophone on it. Many of the more ambient pieces like “Space Messages” bring to mind the best stuff by Astralasia which is only a good thing in my books. Other highlights of the album include the bit mystical “Eyes of the Oracle” and the little Kraftwerk-like ”Voyage Sequence II”. This is an excellent album in every way and a great way to get fast into the spacey music of Ohead!
Ohead’s latest album Dreamstate Circus is possibly the best so far and at first rocks more than before. The opener, a pretty fast and tight title track proves that Dave has found a very well working combination of psychedelic space rock and electronic music. John Simms (Clear Blue Sky) plays lots of superb guitar solos and also some effected vocals are included. Beware, Hawkwind… Tim Jones (Stone Premonitions) plays lead guitar on three of the tracks like on ”A Thousand Stars and A Thousand Moons” that some amazing sequencer stuff and starts off as ambient but transforms later on into a bit dub-like style and then gets a little harder. Dave Hendry himself is featured on the new Stone Premonitions release. There are some dub vibes also on the next piece ”Subliminal Conditioning” and it also has some saxophone (Spacey Rach again). “Meadow of Dreams” is a very pleasant, laid-back track with several guests. “Dubliminal Conditioning” is rather psychedelic, druggy stuff and the album’s longest (13:21) track ”Infinite Potentialities” mainly quite minimal, relaxing and dreamy ambient. “Transition Zone” is trance, danceable material and works really well even though there’s not that much happening. The album is finished with the mellow, sequencer-driven ambient piece “Puzzle Box”. Dreamstate Circus has high-quality music on it, although I would have liked to get another more rocking piece like the title track. Maybe next time!?
www.ohead.co.uk |
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