| Steve Moore — Pangaea Ultima (2013) |
Steve Moore — Pangaea Ultima
Location: Pittsburg, Pennsylvania ~ New York, NY
Aliases: Gianni Rossi, Lovelock
Album release: December 16th, 2013
Record Label: Spectrum Spools
Duration: 58:15
Tracks:
1. Endless Caverns 6:05
2. Planetwalk 5:11
3. Deep Time 5:40
4. Nemesis 6:19
5. Pangaea Ultima 8:49
6. Logotone 5:53
7. Aphelion 7:17
8. Endless Mountains 6:07
9. Worldbuilding 6:54
© 2013 Spectrum Spools
• Manufactured by — www.HandleWithCare.de
• Pressed by — Optimal Media GmbH – AD33087
Credits:
• Artwork, Design — Robert Beatty
• Mastered By — Rashad Becker
• Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker August 2013
• Artwork and design by Robert Beatty
© Steve Moore, Philadelphia concert debut on 13 April 2013
REVIEW
Aaron Coultate
• The synth composer's most recent album is a soon-to-be-released collaboration with Daniel O'Sullivan as Miracle for Planet Mu — though he's also put out two solo LPs under his own name this year: Positronic Neural Pathways on VCO Records and the Horror Business LP for soundtrack fetishists Death Waltz Recording Co (though the latter was originally self-released in 2012). Pangaea Ultima is his first record for Spectrum Spools, the experimental label run by John Elliott.
• The album sees Moore exploring his existential side — "Does a past, present or future even matter to the yet-to-exist events of ungraspable and fundamental ecological time?" the press release asks — while the LP's title is taken from the name scientists have given to a "future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years." The record itself explores the possible nature of this continent — its size, formation and terrain. Sound-wise, you can expect Moore to explore the more melodic and experimental end of his palette.
REVIEW
By Gregory Adams
• Zombi´s Steve Moore gave us his Horror Business earlier this year, but up next for the synth wizard will be a solo album titled Pangaea Ultima.
• The nine-song set is Moore’s first for Spectrum Spools, and it drops December 16 on double LP and CD. According to a press release, the song cycle ruminates on theories surrounding Pangaea Ultima, “the future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years.” Apparently, through these songs, Moore “meditates upon the realization of this new land mass.”
• The 60-minute album is said to be full of “synthscapes which unfurl with equal amounts of delicacy and meticulous detail,” with similar aural touchstones including Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra and Michael Stearns’s Planetary Unfolding. http://exclaim.ca/
Tumblr: http://stevemoore2600.tumblr.com/
Description:
• How can we imagine the future of the world, away from the standards of time that we have insisted upon giving it? How to conceive of the movements of a world in its arcs and sweeps of continents and oceans across ages without reducing it to cheap historical humanisations? Does a past, present or future even matter to the yet-to-exist events of ungraspable and fundamental ecological time?
• Pangaea Ultima, Steve Moore’s debut record on Spectrum Spools, is an epic musical achievement, not simply for its sonic sophistication and compositional mastery, but also because Moore has crafted here an album that has gone as close to any in transcending the boxed human logic of time and place. The album title refers to the name which geologists have given to the future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years. Over the course of the 9 pieces on Pangaea Ultima, Moore meditates upon the realisation of this new land mass in an uncharted part of the world’s moment. How will this continent come to be formed? What forces and what processes create it? What is this continent’s terrain of Endless Mountains and Endless Caverns, and on what kind of planet will it be? These are all speculative questions that alight the listener as they are subsumed into Steve Moore’s synthscapes which unfurl with equal amounts of delicacy and meticulous detail.
• In some respects, the attitude and ambition of Pangaea Ultima places this work in a similar canon as the mythic territory of Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra or the cosmic imaginations of Michael Stearns’ Planetary Unfolding, and yet it evades both comparisons as easily. There is something mysteriously self-contained, urgent that pervades these assemblages of tracks. Logotone exhibits Moore’s ability to stretch the sensibilities of melodic and chordal phrasing to limits that Schulze or Alan Hawkshaw wouldn’t have gone. The compositions on Pangaea Ultima, like Planetwalk and Nemesis are more tightly coiled even in their constant straining to explode outwards to the stars beyond. And when Moore plays with rhythms, they resemble the idiosyncratic mould of his releases for Long Island Electrical Systems, Future Times and Kompakt, and yet seem to push even further towards an eerie sparseness yet to be fully tapped. If there are 4/4 kicks on Pangaea Ultima, like on Deep Time and the title track, its for a world skewed on a bent axis. Musically, this is a record of both microscopic and macroscopic reward, an absorbing listen that betrays the albums 60 minutes of length.
• Which again returns us to the question of time and how so expertly Moore has managed to avoid it. Or more so, how he has managed to find a fold in time — an atemporal space — where this album anomalously nestles by itself. Moore reaches out to the moment of genesis of Pangaea Ultima and slips into its imaginary logic of time and place. He does not intrude or indulge there. Nor are there any “retro” homages or “sci-fi” tropes/ambitions on Pangaea — we can not even be sure whether humans have a history they can call a future on this continent. Yet just as easily, as geologists concede, this future super-continent may never end up eventuating, which would mean this imminently possible reality will melt into fantasy. But this too, is not a bad place for Steve Moore’s masterpiece to end up either.
• myth is the internalising of natural phenomena through explicable narratives
• fantasy is the stepping outside of history in order to make narratives explicable
Discography:
• The Henge (Relapse Records, 2007)
• Fever Dream (Mexican Summer, 2009)
• Primitive Neural Pathways (Static Caravan, 2010)
• Light Echoes (Cuneiform Records, 2012)
• "Signal II" remix on Long Distance Poison's Gliese Translations (2013)
As Gianni Rossi:
• Gutterballs Original Soundtrack (Permanent Vacation, 2008)
• Star Vehicle Original Soundtrack (Permanent Vacation, 2010)
On the internet:
INTERVIEW: http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1594
RA DJ Page: residentadvisor.net/dj/stevemoore
Website: www.stevemoore2600.com
Twitter: twitter.com/stevemoore2600
Discogs: discogs.com/artist/steve+moore+(3)
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| Steve Moore — Pangaea Ultima (2013) |
Steve Moore — Pangaea Ultima
© Steve Moore, Philadelphia concert debut on 13 April 2013
Location: Pittsburg, Pennsylvania ~ New York, NY
Aliases: Gianni Rossi, Lovelock
Album release: December 16th, 2013
Record Label: Spectrum Spools
Duration: 58:15
Tracks:
1. Endless Caverns 6:05
2. Planetwalk 5:11
3. Deep Time 5:40
4. Nemesis 6:19
5. Pangaea Ultima 8:49
6. Logotone 5:53
7. Aphelion 7:17
8. Endless Mountains 6:07
9. Worldbuilding 6:54
© 2013 Spectrum Spools
• Manufactured by — www.HandleWithCare.de
• Pressed by — Optimal Media GmbH – AD33087
Credits:
• Artwork, Design — Robert Beatty
• Mastered By — Rashad Becker
• Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker August 2013
• Artwork and design by Robert Beatty
REVIEW
Aaron Coultate
• The synth composer's most recent album is a soon-to-be-released collaboration with Daniel O'Sullivan as Miracle for Planet Mu — though he's also put out two solo LPs under his own name this year: Positronic Neural Pathways on VCO Records and the Horror Business LP for soundtrack fetishists Death Waltz Recording Co (though the latter was originally self-released in 2012). Pangaea Ultima is his first record for Spectrum Spools, the experimental label run by John Elliott.
• The album sees Moore exploring his existential side — "Does a past, present or future even matter to the yet-to-exist events of ungraspable and fundamental ecological time?" the press release asks — while the LP's title is taken from the name scientists have given to a "future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years." The record itself explores the possible nature of this continent — its size, formation and terrain. Sound-wise, you can expect Moore to explore the more melodic and experimental end of his palette.
REVIEW
By Gregory Adams
• Zombi´s Steve Moore gave us his Horror Business earlier this year, but up next for the synth wizard will be a solo album titled Pangaea Ultima.
• The nine-song set is Moore’s first for Spectrum Spools, and it drops December 16 on double LP and CD. According to a press release, the song cycle ruminates on theories surrounding Pangaea Ultima, “the future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years.” Apparently, through these songs, Moore “meditates upon the realization of this new land mass.”
• The 60-minute album is said to be full of “synthscapes which unfurl with equal amounts of delicacy and meticulous detail,” with similar aural touchstones including Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra and Michael Stearns’s Planetary Unfolding. http://exclaim.ca/
Tumblr: http://stevemoore2600.tumblr.com/
Description:
• How can we imagine the future of the world, away from the standards of time that we have insisted upon giving it? How to conceive of the movements of a world in its arcs and sweeps of continents and oceans across ages without reducing it to cheap historical humanisations? Does a past, present or future even matter to the yet-to-exist events of ungraspable and fundamental ecological time?
• Pangaea Ultima, Steve Moore’s debut record on Spectrum Spools, is an epic musical achievement, not simply for its sonic sophistication and compositional mastery, but also because Moore has crafted here an album that has gone as close to any in transcending the boxed human logic of time and place. The album title refers to the name which geologists have given to the future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years. Over the course of the 9 pieces on Pangaea Ultima, Moore meditates upon the realisation of this new land mass in an uncharted part of the world’s moment. How will this continent come to be formed? What forces and what processes create it? What is this continent’s terrain of Endless Mountains and Endless Caverns, and on what kind of planet will it be? These are all speculative questions that alight the listener as they are subsumed into Steve Moore’s synthscapes which unfurl with equal amounts of delicacy and meticulous detail.
• In some respects, the attitude and ambition of Pangaea Ultima places this work in a similar canon as the mythic territory of Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra or the cosmic imaginations of Michael Stearns’ Planetary Unfolding, and yet it evades both comparisons as easily. There is something mysteriously self-contained, urgent that pervades these assemblages of tracks. Logotone exhibits Moore’s ability to stretch the sensibilities of melodic and chordal phrasing to limits that Schulze or Alan Hawkshaw wouldn’t have gone. The compositions on Pangaea Ultima, like Planetwalk and Nemesis are more tightly coiled even in their constant straining to explode outwards to the stars beyond. And when Moore plays with rhythms, they resemble the idiosyncratic mould of his releases for Long Island Electrical Systems, Future Times and Kompakt, and yet seem to push even further towards an eerie sparseness yet to be fully tapped. If there are 4/4 kicks on Pangaea Ultima, like on Deep Time and the title track, its for a world skewed on a bent axis. Musically, this is a record of both microscopic and macroscopic reward, an absorbing listen that betrays the albums 60 minutes of length.
• Which again returns us to the question of time and how so expertly Moore has managed to avoid it. Or more so, how he has managed to find a fold in time — an atemporal space — where this album anomalously nestles by itself. Moore reaches out to the moment of genesis of Pangaea Ultima and slips into its imaginary logic of time and place. He does not intrude or indulge there. Nor are there any “retro” homages or “sci-fi” tropes/ambitions on Pangaea — we can not even be sure whether humans have a history they can call a future on this continent. Yet just as easily, as geologists concede, this future super-continent may never end up eventuating, which would mean this imminently possible reality will melt into fantasy. But this too, is not a bad place for Steve Moore’s masterpiece to end up either.
• myth is the internalising of natural phenomena through explicable narratives
• fantasy is the stepping outside of history in order to make narratives explicable
Discography:
• The Henge (Relapse Records, 2007)
• Fever Dream (Mexican Summer, 2009)
• Primitive Neural Pathways (Static Caravan, 2010)
• Light Echoes (Cuneiform Records, 2012)
• "Signal II" remix on Long Distance Poison's Gliese Translations (2013)
As Gianni Rossi:
• Gutterballs Original Soundtrack (Permanent Vacation, 2008)
• Star Vehicle Original Soundtrack (Permanent Vacation, 2010)
On the internet:
INTERVIEW: http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1594
RA DJ Page: residentadvisor.net/dj/stevemoore
Website: www.stevemoore2600.com
Twitter: twitter.com/stevemoore2600
Discogs: discogs.com/artist/steve+moore+(3)
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