In the inter-stellar trajectory of the classic Peter Thomas Orchestra and 101 String's landmark album of esoteric, erotic electronica, "Astro Sounds from Beyond the Year 2000", as well as more modern masters of mood music like Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream, Switzerland's Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited brings us their sixth CD of cinematic ear candy, "The Spooky Sound Sessions" (Dionysus Records). Tunes with titles like "Contract Killer," "The Whistler Returns," "Robotheque" and "la fille dans le train" atmospherically evoke a rainy, windswept, timelessly retro-Euro-noir world of sexy spies, androgynous androids, Danish modern furniture, space age architecture, lunar lounge lizards, leather-n-leopard clad sex kittens, sleek cars and cool people wearing stylish hats, trench coats and sunglasses - in the dark…
Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited, a Swiss duo consisting of Ernest Maeschi and Karen Diblitz, create enticing instrumentals with an ultra-modern twist that draw from a variety of genres, including spy movie theme music, surf, lounge, and exotica. When this album first came out, they claimed that the music here was actually written by their fathers, for Swiss television programs in the 1960s…
This 1970 album by the German group Joy Unlimited was, to the eternal confusion of discographers, issued under three separate titles. In Germany, it was called Overground; in the U.K., Turbulence; and, in the U.S., simply Joy Unlimited. Although the band would later go in a more progressive direction, this LP was not all that progressive in nature, and not at all like the avant art rock of the 1970s Krautrock movement. Instead, it was a competent amalgam of trends in American and British mainstream rock, pop, and soul, rather like the kind flashed by numerous bands emerging in neighboring Holland at the same time, like Shocking Blue. And, like Shocking Blue, Joy Unlimited sang entirely in English and were fronted by a woman singer (Joy Fleming); you wouldn't especially either identify them as a band from a non-English-speaking country, or be able to identify them as coming from any place in particular.