Record Icon

Artemiy Artemiev is a musician from Russia whose albums usually cross boundaries between new age music, electronics, and electro-acoustics. For Space Icon he teamed up with German painter/musician Peter Frohmader to record a CD strongly rooted in space rock territory. The album is made up of layers of keyboards over which Frohmader pins his guitar solos and eery soundscapes, along with an occasional groove. This release represents the most accessible work from both artists. Artemiev's electronics are clearly more beat and song oriented here. On the other end, Frohmader's contribution is a lot less gloomy here than on another collaborative work released at the same time, Fossil Culture with Richard Pinhas (on Cuneiform Records)…

The songwriting core of '80s supergroup Asia was vocalist/bassist John Wetton and keyboardist Geoffrey Downes. Guitarist Steve Howe and drummer Carl Palmer contributed to the awesome whole, but virtually every song on 1982's number-one behemoth Asia and 1983's Alpha were officially credited to Wetton and Downes. After the original lineup splintered following those two albums, Downes continued to lead various incarnations of the group with occasional, gradually dwindling involvement from the others. Wetton and Downes resumed writing together from time to time, and finally pooled their talents to record 2005's Icon, which is what they also named this duo project itself.

Universal Music Distribution's Icon series dealt with Barry White's extensive back catalog in two forms. This one, a single-disc compilation (the other was a two-disc set), stays true to the Icon series format with 12 tracks and minimal packaging. It’s a decent sampler, but it’s nowhere near definitive and it doesn’t distill White’s work to its essence (an impossible task when limited to one disc). Several of the man’s most popular singles are here, including “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe,” “It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me,” “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby,” and “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything.” This merely scratches the surface.