The Interstellar Cementmixers - "Night Radiation"
(Planet X Records 2001, PX 2035)

From Aural Innovations #18 (January 2002)

Be prepared to journey into the deepest, darkest, farthest reaches of space. With their vast array of keyboards and electronic effects, UK musicians Stephen Martin and Richard Collins will take you there. Night Radiation is the latest release from the Interstellar Cementmixers, and it continues their tradition of electronic music that hearkens back to the early days of the great space explorers like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze.

From the opening 14-minute track, Mind Prison, we're treated to broad washes of deep, deep electronic ambience, a cosmic sea with strange fish bubbling and crying in its depths. The journey continues with gurgling, deep space signals penetrating eerie, rumbling drones on Optic Crevace. Lighthouse Concealment creeps up on you slowly, a lonely beacon in a vast sea of darkness, while Oscillating Sarcophagus is eerie and chilling, a frozen sound that may cause your breath to mist. In contrast, Faded Prophecy inspires awe, with its enormous curtains of sound blowing in the cosmic wind. The final track, the 18-minute Night Radiation, may be a little more earthbound, but you will still feel like you are standing on the top of a lonely hill, late at night, shivering in the cold wind, but bathed by the light of a billion stars from above.

Although I compared the Interstellar Cementmixers sound to early voyagers like Tangerine Dream, their music is not about hypnotic sequences, it's about deep, deep ambience, and the vast coldness of outer space. Think of TD's classic album Zeit (a personal all-time favourite of mine), and you will get an idea of what to expect. It will send shivers up your spine, bring goose bumps out on your flesh, and take your mind into the deepest dark matter chasms of the interstellar void. Turn off the lights, put the headphones on and take the trip!

For more information you can visit the Interstellar Cementmixer's web site at: http://www.interstellarcementmixers.co.uk.
Contact via snail mail c/o Planet X Records; 21 Munford Circus; Cinderhill; Notthingham; NG8 6ED; UK.

Reviewed by Jeff Fitzgerald

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