“Another year, another Nightwishcore release,” one is tempted to think at the sight of Lost in Grey…
Echoes, Spaces, Lines collects Trans-Millenia Consort, Plot Zero, and Spectre, the first three albums by the late West Coast composer, healer, and medium Pauline Anna Strom. Exploring all corners of the multiverse through transpersonal form and freedom, Strom’s first three albums share a singular sensibility, different streams flowing from the same oracular font. Echoes, Spaces, Lines establishes Strom’s rightful place in the canon of great synthesists. Restored and mixed from the original reels by Marta Salogni, newly remastered, and adding Oceans of Tears, a fully realized but previously unreleased album exclusive to the physical editions of this box set, these are the first official reissues and the definitive encapsulation of Pauline Anna Strom’s prolific and visionary early work. This four LP box set includes a 12-page booklet containing liner notes, an unearthed interview with Strom, and unseen ephemera.
The Electric Family, led by singer and songwriter Tom "The Perc" Redecker, is not a group; it is a tribe of singers and players drawn from more than three decades of German space music. Previous records featured members of Thirsty Moon, Embryo, Amon Düül II and Grobschnitt as well as kindred spirits from the Tav Falco and Jimmy Page/Robert Plant bands. "Ice Cream Phoenix" (2003) is a true unity project. Part of the album was recorded in the old Studio of the DDR in the former East Berlin and brings together musicians from both sides of the fallen Wall and beyond, including pianist Rainer Kirchmann of the band Pankow, Agitation Free drummer Burghard Rausch and pedal steel guitarist Hermann Lammers-Meyer, a veteran of stone country sessions in Nashville and Austin, Texas…
Swedish singer, songwriter, and keyboardist Anna von Hausswolff issued her debut full-length Singing from the Grave in 2012. Despite its sobering title, the album was full of melodic, fragile, Gothic ballads. On Ceremony, the term "Gothic" applies even more here than on its predecessor, yet the music has progressed almost immeasurably. Von Hausswolff employed an Annedal church organ as her primary instrument on this date (it's on nine of the 13 songs), though she also plays piano and synth. Its amazing array of tones, sounds, and timbres color the proceedings with an array of possibilities most pop recordings never imagine, let alone use. Further, Von Hausswolff's approach here has been influenced directly – and admittedly – by the post-metal sonics of Earth and the groundbreaking vocal innovations of Diamanda Galas.
Kai Hansen formed Helloween in 1984, playing guitar and singing on the speed metal band's first four albums. He left in early 1989, however, and founded Gamma Ray with vocalist Ralf Scheepers (formerly with Tyran Pace). The duo intended to record a one-off project that Hansen originated while in Helloween, so they recruited bassist Uwe Wessel, drummer Matthias Burchardt, and several other musicians…