CD Reviews

Ozric Tentacles

The Floor’s Too Far Away | Magna Carta

By TED DROZDOWSKI | July 11, 2006

3.0 Stars

COSMIC VOYAGES: Ozric Tentacles

This is one of the best tickets to intra-cranial space travel since the heyday of Yes and Tangerine Dream. Twenty years into their career, British prog-rockers Ozric Tentacles have made a masterpiece of mood and melody that’s a throwback to the genre’s golden era of the early 1970s and also rhythmic enough to fit into the contemporary music scene, with a blend of programmed percussion and organic drumming that splits the difference between trip-hop and chill-room electronica. These nine songs are also carefully mixed, with panning and the placement of sounds in the audio spectrum used to play psycho-acoustic mind games. Dig “Armchair Journey,” a little cosmic voyage that lives up to its name as it surges and fades through a continuum of shifting dynamics, allowing melodies to swell to the fore whenever the pulse of the trip slows. For “Jellylips,” leader and composer Ed Wynne slips off keyboards for a while to plug in an electric guitar and wail, laying a scalding single-note lead over percolating layers of beats. At times Wynne knowingly drops into self-parody: the farting keyboard melody line of “Splat!” swipes at prog-rock’s history of seriousness before leaping into guitar heroics. Yet his compositional intelligence keeps a number of rhythmic and melodic ideas burbling at once, so there’s always something new beckoning the ear.

Related: Space cases, Funny business, No advil, no booze, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Science and Technology, Technology, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY TED DROZDOWSKI

TOM HAMBRIDGE | BOOM! | August 23, 2011
Roots rock is the new country and ex-Bostonian Tom Hambridge is the style's current MPV.

COUNTRY STRONG | SOUNDTRACK | January 11, 2011
This steaming pile of songs is emblematic of the state of mainstream country music — all artifice, no heart, calculated anthems written to formula and meant, like the film itself, to do no more than capitalize on the genre's current success and rob its undiscriminating fans.

MARC RIBOT | SILENT MOVIES | November 02, 2010
This exceptional, eccentric guitarist has traced a slow evolution from screamer to dreamer.

IN MEMORIAM: SOLOMON BURKE, 1940 — 2010 | October 11, 2010

REVIEW: RONNIE EARL AND THE BROADCASTERS | SPREAD THE LOVE | September 07, 2010
Boston-based blues-guitar virtuoso Ronnie Earl seems to be considering his past on his 23rd album as a leader.