Did you just down an entire smoothie composed of Cluster, Vangelis, and
Brian Eno for breakfast? Because I just did, and I think Nicholas Langley did
too, or maybe that’s what his breakfast smoothies consist of everyday, that and
some bananas and soy milk and other healthy oddities. John Carpenter? Sure.
Kale? Why not. Make the thing green. This cassette tape sure is.
Just because you can say those names out loud doesn’t mean you can
craft the same type of music within that sci-fi ambient synth idiom. It takes a
special kind of celestial soul to get on that interstellar tip. Fortunately for
us, they must distill astrophysics in Brighton and distribute it en masse, or
at least in heavy doses in the Langley household, because our boy Nick, perhaps
perched on the edge Brighton Pier, staring out into the expanse (or toward
France), has it coursing through his system. Or maybe he’s just internalized it
over time – he has been making this
kind of music for many years, and indeed runs a label called Entropy Music that
is home to many of his releases (several of which are collaborative efforts
with label cofounder David Dilliway), including Phragaonesia, Gestalt
Projectection, and The Reasonable Men. I guess, in the end, this is just what
he does.
Which makes Thinky Space, his
first cassette release for Entertainment Systems, a completely logical outcome.
The tunes burrow under your skin and head straight for your cerebral cortex,
regardless of whether they’re atmospheric ambient passages (“Svalbard Gothic”)
or pulsing waves of joyous melody (“Yellow, Green, Silver”). Heck, Langley’s
good at both. And the variety does us good, kind of like a breakfast balanced
with all sorts of nutritional goodies, perhaps whipped together in a blender of
some sort. But that’s the smoothie talking again. Once those galactic swirls
start swimming around your field of vision and your relation to your
surroundings becomes less and less observable, it won’t matter anymore. Breakfast
will cease to be important. Brighton will cease to be important. Somehow, the
only important thing will be to exist in the moment and observe. That’s the
feeling I get from Thinky Space,
anyway.
--Ryan Masteller