a dark hour for history ~Kolab is a collaboration between Canadian synthesist Steve Brenner and the erstwhile Peter Gulch of the Nightcrawlers. No deference to that band's singular talents, or to Chuck van Zyl's excellent instrumental voyages, or to any of the other Synkronos artists, but this is the best twenty eight minutes of electronic music yet released from the Synkronos stable. If Brenner and Gulch had just stretched out these two exquisite and meaty compositions longer than their equal fourteen minute length... oh well. The title track is just an incredible mix of light and dark, shadow and substance, metaphor and allegory. Deep, rumbling pastures of synth slowly but surely merge into staggeringly sharp, condensed drum pattern that ominously swells and opens up into even deeper and darker pits of electronics. Captivating, intense and, quite frankly not your typical slice of space music, not what one familiar with the genre would expect at all. There is almost a grungy, gritty feel to the proceedings that have real power, real bite, qualities which are nearly absent from some of the more commercial instrumental poseurs producing so - called 'cosmic' masquerades. On the flip, there's the patently '70s Tangerine Dream - minded "Time Traveller," alot more prosaic than anything the Dream ever did, however, wonderfully energetic and otherworldly. Kolab aren't only treading down paths unbeknowest to most synthesists, they are creating them fervently as they go. Superb.
Darren Bergstein -- I/E   Winter 1992 |