Product Description
tracklist
1. sgxb 06:47
2. invade 04:28
3. haunting 07:00
4. engrained 17:25
5. isolate 18:35
6. desolate 18:56
Behind the COSMIC GROUND project is Dirk Jan Müller, who has released a number of psychedelic / krautrock / electronic recordings with his band ELECTRIC ORANGE over the past 30 years.
Mainly analogue synthesizers and modular systems, Mellotron, 1960s Farfisa organs, analogue string ensembles from the 70s as well as bass and guitar are used in the COSMIC GROUND. The mostly very dark music is 99% electronic in nature, supplemented by some self-recorded atmospheres from different environments that have been processed electronically.
The 6 tracks on ‘Isolate’ offer a musical spectrum from polyrhythmic sequencer lines combined with real tape echo, ambient and free format atmospheres to polyphonic and multiply modulated drones.
All in the sound is very much of the 1970s. You’ll look in vain for preset sounds from digital synthesizers or the prefabricated loops and sequences that are common these days; analog sequencers dominate here!
The cover artwork was created by the French artist Thierry Moreau, known for his work for UNIVERS ZERO, NEUSCHWANSTEIN and HELDON. It underlines the dark mood of the music.
Musician Line-up: Dirk Jan Müller (analog synthesizers / modular systems / Mellotron / Farfisa / string ensembles)
Full Catalog from Cosmic Ground
Cosmic Ground: Cosmic Ground (2CD Reissue) 2014
Cosmic Ground: II 2015
Cosmic Ground: III 2016
Cosmic Ground: IV 2018
Cosmic Ground: 5 2019
Cosmic Ground: 0110 2020
Cosmic Ground: II (CD)
Cosmic Ground: III (CD)
Cosmic Ground: IV (CD)
Cosmic Ground: 5 (CD)
Webstore Manager –
With new technology comes the promise of styles and expressions that we have never heard before. Under the name Cosmic Ground Electric Orange keyboardist Dirk Jan Müller has for over a decade been amassing and deploying synthesizers beneath the beacon first lit over 50 years ago during the Berlin-School era of EM. Supplementing our sense of the possible this style of music, and the gear used to produce it, offers the potential for a remarkable range of revelations. With a strange beauty that borders on the forboding Müller submits his seventh studio album Isolate (73’14”). The depth of each of the six electronic journeys is striking – with each realization providing a spellbinding sense of a place in space. In this full-speed ahead trip behind the beautiful forever of Kosmische Musik the listener encounters all that Spacemusic can be. Energizing and invigorating, emotionally piercing yet thrillingly alien, Isolate will exhaust those who cannot surrender to it. In the headlong drive of spiraling sequencer runs patterns of notes ascend in an echoing motor-motion. Settling into a careful clockwork, saturated Mellotron strings bestow a heightened sensitivity to the cosmic covenant. As creative energy moves from the musician’s interior to that of the audience, bold dissonances ring and spark across an outburst of dramatic imagination. From desolate soundscapes of darkening drones and chilled fallout fields, to the brooding sweep of sustaining sci-fi zones, Isolate easily pulls listeners into its specific sonic realm. This genre was, in ages past, all about the future. These days it is about survival. Synthesists dream about tones, and wake up thinking about them – which connects the artist to the story of the sound, and to what their music should be. But among us fans the act of listening is an act of trust. Along the upward arc of such resolute works of perpetual becoming we rely on Cosmic Ground, our keeper of mysteries, to lead us further – and to not displace too many of us during our drifting, dreaming voyage of the mind.
Chuck van Zyl/STAR’S END – 22 September 2022