Michael Gayed

Nowadays it seems that any music with the slightest hint of a synthesizer is labelled ‘electronic’. It is often a misnomer and cause for consternation amongst disciples of ‘full-fat’ electronic music. There is no doubt, however, that the work of Michael Shipway deserves this moniker. Mister Shipway composes bona fide electronic music and is one half of the much-admired duo, ‘VoLt’. Michael's trio of solo albums - ‘Into Battle’, followed by ‘Beneath Folly’ and then ‘Spirit Of Adventure’ - were released in the nineties to critical acclaim. They conjured-up melodies, rhythms and atmospheric sounds that helped define the zeitgeist of late-twentieth-century electronic music. All three thoroughly deserved their plaudits from the cognoscenti. They were going to be a hard act to follow, even a decade and a half on.

The Storm is an excursion into deep, often un rooted ambience. Stearns can completely transform a space with his swirling layers of sounds. Environments cascade atop each other as the Balinese "Ketjak" chante merges from a white noise of rain and barber-pole glissando, but he also leavens The Storm with welcome respites of minimally drawn melody. The Last Feeling is a techno-tribal trance work of plaintive flute melody and hypnotic hand percussion, while The Light in the Trees illustrates the deep melancholy Stearns can evoke with just a few well-placed chords.

The 54-minute concept album "The Lost World" is a gem of cinematic ambient music which sees accomplished ambient sound painter Michael Stearns deliver another stunning piece of sonic art. Inspired by a trip into The Lost World of Venezuela, this highly textural work is acts as a time capsule, being able to paint a vibrant picture of grand natural surroundings with the many sounds collected during the journey and assorted electronic sounds. The outcome is an impeccable sounding, vast and overall rich sonic tapestry interweaving complex synthesizer layers, assorted percussion, flute, voice and diverse natural soundscapes, in which the Mighty Serge is also clearly present. The expert merging of acoustic and electronic sources into impressive ominous and highly cinematic atmospheres of grand design is fascinating and at times breath taking…

The downside to a success like Thriller is that it's nearly impossible to follow, but Michael Jackson approached Bad much the same way he approached Thriller – take the basic formula of the predecessor, expand it slightly, and move it outward. This meant that he moved deeper into hard rock, deeper into schmaltzy adult contemporary, deeper into hard dance – essentially taking each portion of Thriller to an extreme, while increasing the quotient of immaculate studiocraft. He wound up with a sleeker, slicker Thriller, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not a rousing success, either…

This music, the album EB=MC2 and Chapman and Banai’s concerts together before that can ultimately be traced back to two valleys. One near Hawnby, North Yorkshire, lush green and full of trees, the other, more austere, in northern Galilee. Michael Chapman, paying his way through Art College in the early ’60s worked as a woodsman on the North Yorkshire Mexborough estate in the summer breaks and found inspiration for classics like “In the Valley” and “Among the Trees,” leaning against the trees with his guitar. Slightly later, Ehud Banai spent an extended reflective period in the ’70s, alone near Rosh Pina in Galilee, with his guitar, a ghetto blaster and one cassette. On that inspirational cassette was Michel Chapman’s 1969 Fully Qualified Survivor album. Travel forward over 30 years to 2012, and Ehud, now a successful musician with a string of his own albums, is playing The 12 Bar Club on Denmark Street in London.