Search - quarkspace, Howarth :: Node in Peril

Great space rock by this Ohio band

BENJAMIN MILER | Veneta, Oregon | 07/21/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is my first try at Quarkspace and this is one great space rock CD. This is a collaboration between Quarkspace and underground sci-fi comic Matt Howarth. He is hardly a stranger to prog rock, so that's why he lended his hand here. Of course Matt himself doesn't play on the album, he simply provided the cover artwork and a 16 page comic included with the CD (Matt also did a similar collaboration with Radio Massacre International, a British electronic trio, for their 2-CD set Emissaries, although the comic book for that CD was through a .pdf file accessible through Adobe Acrobat Reader). OK, so aside from Node in Peril, I am not that familiar with their back catalog, although I understand some of their releases have vocals, from bassist Chet Santia, and there are a series of Spacefolds releases. This one is all-instrumental, and is apparently similar to the Spacefolds series but with overdubs that the band wouldn't do on their normal Spacefolds releases.



On this particular CD, imagine, if you will, if King Crimson teamed up with Ash Ra Tempel, and you're not too far off. The guitarist for this CD, Stan Lyon tended to lots of sustained leads with lots of distortion, I wouldn't be surprised if he admired Robert Fripp. Jay Swanson gives us some really great synth work, a lot of it analog (likely from newer analog modeling synths), piano (sounds like it was from a digital keyboard), and even some Mellotron, although I suspect it's a virtual Mellotron, be it from some digital keyboard or from some sort of virtual software for your computer, such as the M-Tron or SampleTron. He really gives out some nice spacy sounds. All the music is improvised. And I forgot about the drumming, I wouldn't be too surprised if Paul Williams admired Bill Bruford big time, because his drumming reminds me a whole lot of Bruford's and that's a good thing. It's not too often I hear a space rock album with that kind of drumming. Space rock fans will certainly enjoy this. It's definitely different from the Gong, Ozric Tentacles, and Hawkwind type of stuff, that's for sure, sounding like Crimson meeting the spacier end of Krautrock. Recommended!"