show: Harald Grosskopf, Outer Space, Steve Hauschildt

Memory Bomb
Pleasant surprise/cap off to an excellent Friday night, VIBES will be hosting a second Harald Grosskopf show tonight at "959 Broadway." Acts include Mr. Grosskopf, who will be playing solo tonight (except electro-percussive righteousness), along with Emeralds John Elliott breaking out his Outer Space unit for the evening, and Steve Hauschildt playing solo, alongside Driphouse. In between, and presumably after, DJs Mark McGuire, Jeremy Campbell, Jan Woo & Etienne. Analog synths abound. Join the fun.

show: Harald Grosskopf, Emeralds, Alan Howarth & MORE!

Cosmic Joker

Along time ago Harald Grosskopf made a record called Synthesist. It was released on the legendary Sky Record label, purveyor of the finest in experimental, ambient and electronic music. But that was a long time ago.

Decades removed and the works of the hypnotic Grosskopf have seeped up from below, influencing countless sound chemists, mixologists and knob-tweakers, and in turn, helping usher in a new wave of post-Internet kosmiche, one as unwaveringly hallucinogenic as the first. In light of this bubbling, RVNG INTL re-issued Synthesist, alongside a collection of remixes and covers by Grosskopf's 21st century offspring. (The appropriately titled Re-Synthesist features the likes of OPN, James Ferraro, Stellar Om Source and many, many more.) This Friday Grosskopf will make a very rare appearance in NYC, where he will be performing the monumental Synthesist with help from a bevy of now-age cohorts, including Blondes, Laurel Halo, Julianna Barwick, ARP and Pink Skull.

This in-and-of itself makes this show mandatory, so the fact that Emeralds are also on the bill, playing both a solo set, AND a set with the legendary Alan Howarth makes it a pre-req for anyone who considers themselves into "experimental music." Consider this a graduate level course in arpeggiated bliss. Grip your tickets here, while you still can. Then peep a minimalist redux of Grosskopf's Trascendental Overdrive by Meadowlands below, as well as a phenomenal live set from Emeralds recorded during their show at the European incarnation of the Unsound Festival.

Meadowlands - Overdrive (Transcended) by RVNG Intl.

Emeralds - live at Unsound 2010, Krakow by factmag

mp3: Radio People "Exhale"

High Spirits

A departure from the music released under his birth/gov't name, Radio People, Sam Goldberg's latest recording project, finds the Cleveland-based experimentalist elevated to a kosmiche synth utopia. Much like his collaboration with Emerald's John Elliot is MIST, "Exhale" is a five minute meditative piece on deep breathing. No guitar work here, just glistening synths warbling in the flourescent sunlight, which gives "Exhale" a bit of a 'space sanctuary'-vibe. Fans of Emeralds, OPN and Rainbow Dome Musick should look for Radio People's The Rumor CD-R on High Spirits.

Radio People- Exhale

mp3: Skyramp Days of Thunder

"Pale Blue Dot"

Somehow, despite the totally in-my-zone album title, a reference to one of my favorite Windows 95 joystick games and the appearance of one of my favorite cosmic voyagers, I completely overlooked Skyramps Days of Thunder. Ian flipped me to it when it was posted on DayvanZombear last week, and like most of the material Dan Lopatin chimes on, it's a mystic, outerspace affair, one that would go well with repeating Carl Sagan's ellegy for Earth, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The collaboration between Lopatin and Mark McGuire, of Emeralds, is a post-Space Race ode to cosmonauts, astronauts, and monkeys, all those who braved the final frontier in the name of exploration. Like "Flight Simulator", "Dripping Water Hollows Out A Stone" channels nether-dimensions left unexplored by most humans, yet dreamt about my many.

Skyramps- Dripping Water Hollows Out A Stone