Cygnus-a [Import]

If you are old enough to have been around during the early 80's, and at the time had an interest in what was going on in the European electronic music field outside the obvious synth-pop genre, chances are that you have stumbled upon Robert Schröder's name (or Robert Schroeder, as he now prefers to spell his name to avoid using the German double-dots).

Galaxie Cygnus A was an obscure, extremely hard-to-find but nevertheless revolutionary album from 1982, dedicated to a bright radio galaxy in deep space with the same name. According to the sleeve notes, the radio signal of the actual galaxy had been transformed into a sound, which played in the beginning and the end of the album. Using a black hole inside a faraway galaxy as a music instrument was something I remember at that time finding pretty intriguing. Well, I have later heard that it was in fact just a synthesized noise, but then who can tell the difference anyway.

The album was never released in a digital format, only as a vinyl disc (LP). It could be downloaded from various MP3 sites as more or less illegal transfers made from the original LP, but most of these files were horrible reproductions lacking any clarity and hifi rendition whatsoever, the damage partly inflicted by the attempted removal of the sizzle and crackling of the original analog media.

I own the original LP and have a pretty decent home-made CD transfer to listen to in my iPod, but when I heard that almost three decades after the release of the original album, Cygnus A was finally being released as a CD, I quickly decided that I simply needed to get it.

Alas, getting hold of the physical CD still seems as hopeless as ever, as it is as far as I know, only obtainable from the publisher's own web site. And since no credit card payment is accepted (no kidding), it seems like a hopeless venture.

Fortunately the album is also offered as a high quality download from iTunes (as completely gapless 256 kbps AAC-files) so that was the road I took.

The album is a complete rerecording of the original material and it sounds just as clear and clean as one would expect. The music has been enhanced with some new sounds, new sound effects and has a far better spatial distribution and audio clarity. But generally speaking, it sounds pretty identical to the original, which was a huge relief for me.

The tracks have now been given names (instead of just numbers), the sound of the radio galaxy has been more pushed into the background and the whispered narration at the beginning of the album has been shortened into just two lines ("hörst du die Stimmen von Cygnus A, im weißen Rauschen der Wellenchören?").

But it is still the same set of gentle, droning melodies, evolving and melting into each other, sometimes underpinned by extremely simple basslines, but hardly ever any percussion whatsoever. Still the same eerie and lush sounds, the same haunting pads, choirs and arpeggios and the same elegant and airy arrangements.

This is indeed a very slow album with a dreamlike, almost underwater languor and very pure electronic sounds to match the astronomical topic. The main theme is elegantly revisited throughout the album, which is a nice but subtle change from the original.

Most of the time the music is majestic, well-crafted and laid-back, but occasionally tends to stray into some kind of electronic noodling, which makes the music sound a bit ennerving.

Some of the sequences (especially the first half of the track "Interstellar Quasars") are a bit too bizarre for my taste and even annoying to be honest, and I rather wish that Mr Schröder would have been a bit more careful with the pitch-bender. I also think that some of the new sound effect elements are rather unnecessary - kind of like trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere of the album is still quite extraordinary and is very well suited to the subject of galactic splendour. I realize that the music may sound awfully dated compared with some of the more rstate of the art equivalents (like "Movements" by Solar Fields), but the original album was a true masterpiece at the time it was originally released, and Cygnus A is a worthy replacement.

This is a complete re-recording of Robert Schroeder's cult classic album Galaxie Cygnus A from the 1980s. The original album was never released on CD only vinyl.

All I can say this is a superb CD for your space ambient/chill collection. The rerecorded tracks have been enhanced by extra sound and ambience that add a new dimension to the listening experience. Having played to death the vinyl and know the original release so well I was expected to be dissappointed in the new album - I was pleasantly surprised that Cygnus-A is a superior album to its previous incarnation. Also an unrelaeased track from the era has been added that fits in quite well

Highly recommended