Michael Stearns Ancient Leaves

Of all the Michael Stearns reissues there have been lately this is my favourite. A deep bass drone slowly gets louder and louder as the first track ‘Ancient Leaves’ starts to emerge from your speakers. The dark drone resonates and initially a chant can just be made out in the depths of the gloop but then it slowly gets more prominent. Things then get very cosmic with angelic, haunting vocal effects. In fact the term “cosmic music” would fit this album perfectly.

The CD is full of drift and superb sonic textures, no rhythm or sequence to be heard, just occasional plucked strings and vocal effects over synth backing. The mini moog is featured heavily and the underlying sounds reminded me of very early Schulze. The plucked strings add to rather than detract from the feeling of space and in many ways fill the function that would be taken up by a sequence placed low in the mix. When they fade away and you are just left with the synths the effect of drift is heightened even more. At nineteen minutes the sound of monks chanting can be heard. You might think this would sound a bit cliched but it doesn’t. It fits perfectly.

The amazing thing is that his album was recorded in 1977 whilst Enigma et al were probably still wearing shorts in the school playground. I have always thought Michael Stearn’s music was OK but it never did it in a big way for me but this album is a revelation. Too often delving into an artist’s obscure early works ends in disappointment. This is most certainly not the case here. I can’t understand how it has avoided CD release for so long. Well done to Groove for releasing it. The second track ‘Elysian E’ follows on in similarly floating fashion but the sounds used are different though still sounding a little ‘Cyborg’ like. The images of deep space are even more vivid than before. Thick analogue sounds are woven together, increasing and decreasing in intensity and believe it or not really do grab the attention for the full twenty odd minutes. Very few cosmic albums manage to do that for me. Half way in it sounds as though there is a helicopter just on the edge of hearing. It gets louder and creates quite a tense atmosphere before disappearing into the distance. Helicopters in space - weird. At just under sixteen minutes we get more plucked strings and ethereal wordless vocals. Two minutes later we are back to sparse but warm synth pads and these take us to the end. An absolutely stunning cosmic album. (DL)

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