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Progressive Rock CD Reviews

Electric Moon

Cellar Space Live Overdose 2LP

Review by Gary Hill

I was sent a CD of this, but I believe it’s actually a vinyl release. If that’s the case, it’s probably a double record set with each piece of music representing one side of one LP. However it breaks down, though, this is an extremely strong set. It’s great space rock jamming that’s expansive and powerful. Certainly comparisons to Hawkwind are rampant, but there are other sounds here, as well.

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2012  Volume 4 at lulu.com/strangesound.

Track by Track Review
Disc 1
Soul Feeder

This rises up gradually, sort of coming out of emptiness as space coalesces from emptiness. It gets quite powerful as it continues. Further down the road it turns into some pounding hard rocking music. This gets into some cool spacey music that’s heavy and yet quite lush. Comparisons to the Doremi…era of Hawkwind are certainly appropriate, but this is heavier and spacier than that really conveys.

The Idle Glance

In some ways the basic concept isn’t greatly altered here. That said, the bass seems to drive this one a bit more. Yet, it doesn’t seem to get quite as heavy and the melodic elements are well placed and powerful. This almost represents a common ground between stoner metal and space rock, but manages to keep from getting overly heavy at the same time. They also take it into some great mellow, spacey territory at times in the piece. In fact, that element dominates more of this piece than it did on “Soul Feeder.” There’s almost a jazzy progressive rock feeling to that section at times. After it builds out later, it takes on more old-school Hawkwind sounds for a while. It gets heavy, but not as heavy as the opener did.

Disc 2
The Verge of Fainting
Spacey atmosphere opens this. Then the rhythm section gradually builds out from there. It makes for a mysterious and dramatic building process. Then the melodic, but crunchy, guitar begins to weave echoey waves of sound over the top. As it continues to build it gets very powerful, echoey and intense. It’s a real screamer and one of the coolest cuts of the set. I love when they take it out into some Eastern sounds later. It becomes mellower in that section, particularly as they continue, but it’s awesome. That gives way to much mellower space music.
Spaceman Return

This comes in very mellow, but eventually moves out into more of the hard rocking space music that dominates the set. Eventually this works out to some of the strangest and noisiest space rock of the whole set. There are some awesome bits of soloing creating melody over the top. There’s an almost Hawkwind tribal sound later, but with instrumentation rather than voices. Yet, we also get some extremely mellow and fairly sparse moments leading to that segment. All in all, this is quite an extensive and dynamic number and works out to some dramatically mellow music at times. In fact, that’s how it ends.

 
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