Kim Cascone's "In a Garden of Eden", released under the moniker The Heavenly Music Corporation in 1993, would have suited me perfectly back then. Still lingering on the echoes of the second summer of love, this music designed for chill out rooms would have been exactly the balm for the soul that I needed. Well, it was 1993, FSOL's "Lifeforms" hadn't been released yet and there was still enough good music to satisfy my craving for ambient, ambient house & house. But the beats had already become harder everywhere, it was suddenly called rave and I increasingly missed the warmth and soul in “techno” music. Even the word techno sounded too cold to me.
But it wasn't until 2018 that I discovered this wonderful album through its re-release on the wonderful label Astral Industries (which deserves a post of its own just because of the fantastic artwork by Theo Ellsworth). HMC's third album was re-released there a year earlier. I don't understand why in this order. “Lunar Phase” also deserves its own post, later in this program.
„In 1989 Cascone became an assistant music editor for director David Lynch on „Twin Peaks“ and „Wild at Heart“. Musically he has used various aliases over the years but became best known under the moniker Heavenly Music Corporation, a name taken from a track on the record „No Pussyfooting by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. Cascone released four full albums under this name from 1993 to 1996.“
„Originally realised at Cascone’s Silent studios in San Francisco for the Space Age Lounge, “a technomystical chill room in Goa, India”, his Heavenly Music Corporation debut is a typically balmy affair awash with tranquil synths and threaded with tropical field recordings to gently levitating effect.
It sounds very much of its time hearkening back to an era when phrases such as “technomystical chill room in Goa” were bandied around without irony, to a time of innocent MDMA experimentation and ISDN video links, right at the start of the internet, a utopian phase before it all went trip hop and everyone spent evenings waiting for webpages to load. Didgeridoos were very popular, too.
To be fair, you probably had to be there or else that period becomes a smudge of cliches as above, but it’s hard to fault the vibes and aura of Cascone’s recordings on ’In A Garden of Eden’. From the gentle swirl of cowbells and circular berthing synths in ‘Cloud Structure’, thru the patter of tropical rainfall in ‘Ambient To Be Here’, to the erotic gasps and ambient techno thump of the record’s title track and Steve Roach’s concluding acididgeridoo excursion, this album is pure paneer, but not without its nostalgic charms.“
-Boomkat-
„Not only is rhythm almost completely missing, but the instruments' drones are mixed with sounds of nature. This album will remain Cascone's most mature work. Organic, watery fluctuations and looping minimal synthesizer melodies (Cloud Structure Silence), stark cosmic landscapes à la early Klaus Schulze swept by icy electronic breezes (The Quiet Mind), suspenseful Steve Roach-y trances (Ambient To Be Here), pulsating Tangerine Dream-y quasar-rock (Dawn Chorus and Reentry, with Roach on didjeridoo) and even an intoxicating disco-raga (Beautiful Dream) represent a superb testament to what electronic music can do to the psyche, encompassing ambient, new age, psychedelic, progressive and world music. The 14-minute In A Garden Of Eden abuses of this technique, mixing water, animals, voices, exotic instruments and even a woman having an orgasm.“
-Piero Scaruffi-
https://www.discogs.com/release/12452982-Heavenly-Music-Corporation-In-A-Garden-Of-Eden
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