Viridian Sun
Solar Noise
Well would you Adam and Eve it! Here’s me reviewing an album elsewhere in this issue (by Telomere) where I was rabbiting on about it being one of the most truly cosmic albums I have ever heard and now up pops another. This one has been around for a couple of years but has only just come to my attention. Viridian Sun comprises M. Griffin and David Tollefson. Both of them also have solo albums to their name which I hope to get round to reviewing shortly but for the moment back to ‘Solar Noise’.

On the opening track ‘Solan Solar n Sol’ it almost sounds as if the universe is breathing and that we are being propelled by the solar winds this is creating. Electronic pulses as if from a generator come in at five minutes but fade away shortly after. The sonic breathing changes its tone and intensity constantly as each star that is passed breaths new life into our craft. Pulses of sound come and then go again but their presence keeps shifting the attention and they add to the feeling that we are on a journey, destination unknown. Two minutes from the end there is a great cacophony of noise which gradually subsides and sorts itself out by the time the track finishes. Another mass of noise descends at the beginning of ‘Voxuua Soexis’ but this time sounding like a heavily distorted human voice. The universe as portrayed on this track isn’t as gentle as the one on the previous number. One mass of sonic disturbance after another issues forth. Could we be going through a series of cosmic storms?

‘Serere’ features a sequence which emerges from a chaos of swirling sound. The sequence fades as what sounds like alien chattering becomes the dominant focus. More noises keep entering but we inevitably return to the spiralling sound pool each time. ‘Nervous Eclipse’ is a rather appropriate track at the moment as I write this on 11th September 99 when most people in the UK who were in the zone of totality saw a magnificent display of clouds. Sorry, to the music. Now this is sparse stuff! We are back into uncharted regions, all is drift but the cosmic wind becomes particularly strong sounding a little like the wind blowing down a lift shaft. ‘Radiat’ starts not too dissimilar to the previous number but whereas that track became more intense nearer the end this one stays in a state of drift right up to the last. (DL)

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