There's no need to be alone any more, Baïkonour bring the universe to you with their debut…
Uniting those lonely hearts spread across those lonely stars, an album that brings together psychodelia and the universe, it's a record of compositions that resemble Philip Glass as if he'd gone through a weird portal which melds him with an instrumental version of The Doors or ELP or even a bit of Pink Floyd. Grandiose in its ability to establish connections all over the show, joining up all those dots in the sky at night with beautiful tracks.
'Lick Lokoum' brings us in gently with overwhelming lushness, then 'Coltan Anyone?' gets a bit rocky with a heavier 60's guitar sound and some lovely organ, Richard Wright, Ray Manzerick style. 'Proto – Cœur' plays around with the listener a little, then it's into the spacey, delay-laden 'Rusk Plasmique', extremely short, but sweet and sensitive and superb…
The more you listen to this record, the more you fall in love with it, it only seems to work as the package, a from-start-to-finish affair, as a whole it makes sense. '60 to 0' runs past like an old film on a reel, kaleidoscopic in its presence, Mogwai would be proud of this number I reckon. Again, '2/3/74' becomes quite rocky but with brilliant 80's-style, Tangerine Dream or Mike Oldfield fast synth twiddles interspersed and the first and only vocal contribution on the album, "if you find this world bad, you should see some of the others." Baïkonour, who consist of main maestro Jean-Emanuel Krieger and additional players such as Lee Adams and Eiji F Morotomi, are completely otherworldly.
Every song is a charming few minutes of blissful evocative music, 'Statica' for example cleverly evoking memories created earlier on the CD, concocting déjà vu. 'Interquaalude' is another short fading masterpiece and then there's the ending classic 'Ultra Lazuli', a soft and supple beauty that escorts you out of the record nicely (until the hidden track hits…)
A bit like Air in ways, yet much more guitar oriented, this band's debut will suit anyone with a taste for leftfield psychedelic soft-space-dance mood-piece moog-music. The thought-process behind the songs is quite unique in comparison to standard modern composition techniques, utilising the latest technologies but combing them with old-school ideas and sounds to mould a timeless piece of law-defying sound.
If your heart is feeling lonely in the great expanse that is the Cosmos, then purchasing Baïkonour 's debut album is definitely the way to go for you. Unrivalled in it strange ability to connect you with outer space and unparalleled as an album of small musical segments that flow as a whole like nothing you ever knew…