Edgar Froese Aqua (Rerelease)

Oh dear. Just when I thought it was safe to perhaps think that Edgar's reissues had escaped relatively unscathed, along came this. For those of you who don't know this one – it is a rerelease of Edgar's first solo album, dating back to 1974. It wasn't even a solo album in the traditional sense as Christopher Franke played the Moog on ngc 891. Save for the title track I have always thought the album interesting albeit unremarkable. But be warned, be very warned, the sleeve notes make it clear that this is a new recording, and right from the start the purists are likely to be offended by what Edgar has done to it.

The title track gets us underway. It starts off with some weird electronics - like radio waves - before the sound of water appears and a cymbal being hit. There is then a muted drum sound, which gets more dominant and which then drives the music along, though from time to time they thankfully fade away. I don't much care for the drums as they are entirely unnecessary embellishments, but to be fair they give a track a momentum that it didn't possess before. However they are an acquired taste and not all of you will enjoy them. If you didn't like the Dream Mixes for example, you will probably regard it as a sacrilege.

Next up is Panorphelia, beginning with a gentle flutey synth sound – a bit like Epsilon, before it gets progressively more urgent. This is very dark stuff, like the soundtrack to a horror movie.

NGC 891 (now in capital letters) starts off in an even more extreme way – are there voices I hear? Those flutey synths then make a brief reappearance, but this is far from easy listening, and the track becomes ever more complex and disturbing as it progresses. For some unfathomable reason it is also some five minutes shorter than the original.

Upland appears to start in much the same vein with Edgar playing what I think is a Mellotron. It all seems very heavenly and angelic, if rather pompous. Upland Dawn is an additional track, composed one assumes specifically for this CD – all too brief jungle cacophony gets it underway, before the drums come plodding in, and it all sounds horribly familiar, like something off Tangerine Dream's The Hollywood Years CD. Awful isn't the word I am thinking of. Completely out of place on this album etc, etc.