Cohort Gaia

This provides a most welcome sequel to La Gaia Scienza’s splendid account of the E flat Schubert Trio (Winter & Winter, 12/97). On that disc Federica Valli plays a Schantz fortepiano with an extremely pungent range of sonorities; here she exchanges it for an 1827 Conrad Graf instrument that is rather more suave and silvery, though recorded with equal immediacy. Indeed, the recording brings out most vividly the character of all three instruments – listen to the start of the Notturno, where the harp-like piano chords contrast most picturesquely with the grainy tone of the gut-strung strings.

A new voice in symphonic metal has arrived, one that is ready to mesmerize us all with voices of sirens and the destruction of Earth, and change the world with a movement as simple and decisive as a flap of a butterfly's wing. A demanding sense of purpose forces itself from the ground beneath as soon as the album begins, and unlike so many symphonic albums, this is not one that lets you carefully ease your way in…

Valensia met Robby Valentine (another Dutch singer) at an airport, as they were both listening to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. After that, Valensia started sending demos to several record companies and producer John Sonneveld noticed him. Then Valensia signed a record deal with Mercury Records and in 1993 his first album "Valensia" was released.

Various versions of the album’s title track.
Inspired to enter the field of electronic music by Britain's acid house explosion of the late '80s, Toby Marks took quite a different spin on electronica with his recordings as Banco de Gaia, introducing elements of Eastern and Arabic music, sampling similarly exotic sources, and tying the whole to ambient-dub rhythms. Marks began releasing cassette-only albums in the early '90s, distributed through a network of clubs and artists known as Planet Dog. When Planet Dog became a record label as well (later the home of Eat Static and Timeshard), Banco de Gaia debuted on disc with the Desert Wind EP, released in November 1993.