The The Orb

Begin Again, Hersch's new Palmetto release featuring the Cologne-based WDR Big Band, arranged and conducted by six-time Grammy winner Vince Mendoza, serves as both an expertly curated overview of the pianist's oeuvre and a singular new entry in his expansive discography. The album features nine of Hersch's original compositions, plucked from throughout his various projects and preferred formats, including one previously unrecorded piece.

ColorStar is a psychedelic/space rock band that has lately ventured more into the trance/dance spectrum of the genre. The earlier albums were more like the traditional style of the genre, where now things are more electronic and modernized, sometimes resulting in a great sound, other times just becoming too repetitive and trance-like. The album "Time is the Drug" is their 8th album since their debut in 1998. The album isn't bad, and some of the tracks are quite interesting and good, but it seems that it tends to lean toward a dance vibe more than it does a progressive sound. The best tracks are the ones on the first half of the album that tend to take on the 'Orb' style and take cues from space rock and krautrock, where the 2nd half of the album becomes too disco sounding with less of the interesting effects and styles of the first half.

Chillout albums were all the rage during the early 2000s, but despite the attention, no one had made a record quite like Funki Porcini's Fast Asleep since the glory days of ambient techno, when the Orb's "A Huge Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld" merged Tangerine Dream, the Mad Professor, and Larry Heard into a collage of pastoral bliss. Fast Asleep, though obviously functional in a variety of contexts, wasn't designed to soundtrack trips back from the clubs or lazy nights at home with friends, and as such, it neatly side-steps the conscious hipness that usually compromises chillout records. James Braddell, a downbeat veteran stretching back more than a decade, crafted Fast Asleep to move in and out of its framework, with lengthy transitions introducing - or deconstructing - virtually every production…