| Track by Track Review
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Sol
Starting with dramatic, atmospheric elements, spoken words come over the top in airy, artistic way. Then it starts to rock out more from there as this continues. A more traditional progressive rock sound begins to dominate. As it builds and evolves this turns to more space rock oriented music and gets into some great jamming. It drops back to atmosphere for more speaking at the end.
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Mercury
More fusion-like in sound, this is a cool jam that really soars at times. We’re taken through a number of changes and parts of this become more jam band like, while others have more of that space rock element. The vocals on this are more sung and kind of spacey in nature. |
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Venus
There are some great funky fusion sounds on this killer piece. This one stays reasonably constant and is a purely instrumental tune.
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Luna
Weird bits of tuned percussion and other sounds make up this short (22 seconds) cut. |
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Earth
The musical motif that opens this makes me think a bit of Yes, but as the spoken vocals come over the top it definitely feels like Frank Zappa. Still, this is melodic progressive rock that’s quite cool. It’s just those spoken bits remind me a lot of Zappa. The female vocals bring more of that melodic prog to the table, too. All in all, it’s a pretty intriguing musical ride.
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Mars
Starting mysterious and yet beautiful, this cut builds gradually. Another instrumental, this gets turned into some cool fusion. |
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Pallas
Here we get a short bit of atmosphere.
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Main Belt
Pounding out heavy, while this is metallic, it’s not metal, but rather killer instrumental prog. It’s a fairly short piece of music. It does have one short mellow interlude.
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Ceres
Here we have another instrumental fusion jam.
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Io
This is mysterious and atmospheric and also quite short.
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Jupiter
A longer cut - but come on, a song about Jupiter can’t be small, right? – there are heavier moments here, but also sedate and quite pretty ones. At times I’m reminded of Starcastle on this thing. A jam later features both some cool keyboard sounds and an almost Yes-like arrangement. It works out to a mellow section later. |
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Titan
Starting with control to ship chatter, keyboards rise up in fine electronic space fashion. That’s the motif of this short instrumental.
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Saturn
More melodic and fully realized progressive rock makes up the sound of this tune. Around the minute and a half minute it drops down to atmosphere and we get some radio chatter. Then it works out into another melodic prog jam. While related to the previous one, it’s also rather different. When it gets mellow again for the next chatter section, it feels a bit like Pink Floyd. As it turns back to the melodic prog jam that comparison remains rather accurate. It powers out further down the road into a section that has hints of both Yes and Pink Floyd in the mix. It continues to change and evolve with some great layers of sound emerging over the top of the arrangement here and there. |
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Dione
This number is made up of ambient, drone-like sounds. It’s another short one.
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Neptune
With mellow and intricate acoustic guitar sounds bringing this in amidst atmospheric music, Pink Floyd is certainly a valid reference on this introduction. Then it works its way out to a different movement that’s more like melodic fusion. Some dramatic motifs are heard at times as icing on the cake. There’s a tasty melodic guitar solo later in the piece. Different themes return here and there as this continues and it’s one of the most effective numbers on show here. |
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Oberon
Mellow atmosphere serves as the backdrop for the echoey spoken recitation. |
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Uranus
Starting off with more of a rocking sound, there are some distorted, almost extreme metal vocals in place on this piece. They are spoken, but also very weird. This cut has melodic moments (I can swear I make out some Jimi Hendrix quotes in terms of the melody lines) but it also has some of the weirdest music of the whole disc. There’s a bouncy little circus like section to this, too. Later in the piece we get a section that even feels a bit like Metallica. |
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Pluto
Strange atmospheric music includes a spoken section that’s distorted, processed and echoed. It has plenty of weird space.
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Haumea
Piano and weird world type vocals make up this short cut.
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Eris
Processed spoken vocals open this before it works out into a cool melodic space rock jam. There are more of those spoken vocals and some cool bits of science fiction like keyboards along with tasty guitar work and more. Those spoken bits are the robot from “Lost in Space.” This is a fun, driving jam. It works out to a weird, rather off-kilter jam later. |
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