"A Distant Signal" is only $20.00CAN plus shipping and taxes where applicable!

Gregory Kyryluk (a.k.a. Alpha Wave Movement) has crafted some of the best rhythmic and floating electronic ambient albums in recent years, going all the way back to his excellent debut, Trancendence, and including recent releases like Drifted Into Deeper Lands and his collaboration with Jim Cole (of Spectral Voices fame), Bislama. But even with all that, I was unprepared for the superlative exploration of spacemusic that is A Distant Signal. Slot this winner alongside classics like And the Stars Go With You and Flightpath (from Jonn Serrie), West of the Galaxy (from Geodesium) and Planetary Unfolding (from Michael Stearns). It deserves to be there, goodness knows.

My belief in the above opinion was forged when I went for a late evening walk (with Onyx, our lab-rottweiller mix) under a full moon along the Mississippi River Parkway near our house. I grabbed my portable CD player and put A Distant Signal in. Wow - talk about a synchronous experience! I thought I was going to float up into the dark night sky!

A great collection of songs fills this entire album: the analog-sounding warmth of the opening track, "Mapping the Heavens," (with neat dialogue samples from the film Contact), playfully cosmic rhythms on "Outward Bound" (and its twinkling bell-like synth effects and soaring chords and washes), the mournful adagio number "Requiem for C.S." (written by Gregory in memory of the late Carl Sagan and filled with dramatic and sorrowful melodies), and perhaps my favorite track, "Portal Full of Stars" (a sly nod to 2001, perhaps?), which opens amidst spacy effects and deep rumblings, but evolves into an inviting, kinetic and trippy slice of outer space beats, lovely washes and synth chords, anchored by appropriately echoed sparse piano.

While purists may claim that overt rhythms and electronic beats are verbotten in "true" spacemusic, I say "Phooey!" From the cover art of a nebula against a backdrop of stars to titles like "Lunar Sunrise," "LiquidCosmos," and "Centauri Memories," A Distant Signal is spacemusic par excellence to THIS science fiction and astronomy fan. I love both the low-key drifting minimal yet warm tonalities of "Plasma Cloud" as well as the slightly spooky "No Man's Land," with its opening computer noises and snippets of radio transmissions flowing into breathy expanses of keyboards, which manage to be both majestic yet serene, and morphing into a driving propulsive marriage of beautiful minor/major keyboards and fast tempo beats. The title track similarly evolves from its beginning (lush layers of analog-like keyboards and spacy effects that gradually recede in favor of a circular synth-bell refrain on top of lush keyboards and a midtempo rhythm section - high-hats, bass drums, hand percussion effects - with the emergence of a lovely main melody line on Serrie-like synths).

Other points of recommendation for A Distant Signal include the variety of shorter and longer (but not too long) tracks and perfect engineering, which makes playback on headphones a superior listening experience. Fans of not just John Serrie but also Geodesium (a.k.a. Mark Petersen) are particularly encouraged to pick up on this recording. All in all, A Distant Signal is about as perfect as a spacemusic album can get, in my opinion. With equal doses of warm melodies, spacy synths, "cruising speed" rhythms, and floating ambient stretches that suggest the vastness of the cosmos, this album deserves to find a huge audience. It has to be in the running for best spacemusic recording of 2002, and probably one of the best of the (admittedly young) decade as well.

Bill Binkleman - Wind and Wire