Sound Library — All Formats  

An amazing collaboration – with equally amazing sounds to boot! The album's an experiment between sculptor Betha Sarasin and electronic musician Bruno Spoerri (who you might know from jazz and sound library recordings too) – who create a "instrument sculpture" based along geometric progressions – then played on lyricon, soprano sax, ring emulator, Prophet synth, vocoder, and computer generators – as well as the sculpture itself! The explanation is a bit obtuse – as is the music – but the whole thing has a powerful analogue quality that's wonderful – almost 50s/60s musique concrete, but a bit more cyclical overall – especially as the album progresses.

A treasure trove of Brit sound library work – most of it from the legendary KPM 1000 Series, plus assorted bits from the Conroy label as well! The work here leans heavily towards funky jazz – those fuzzy, hard-driving tunes that always made KPM sides a key choice for action films and cop shows – and which have made digging through sound library records such a delight all these many decades later! The compilers did a really wonderful job with this set – creating a feel that's a bit different than the usual sound library collection – because although funky overall, the package also features some jazzy moments too – key cuts that are interspersed with the action moments to create a really fleshed-out sense of mood and feeling. Plus, the set list is huge – 25 tracks in all, running for well over 70 minutes – truly the treasure trove we promised at the start of this review, with titles that include "Soul For Sale" and "Tycoon" by Keith Mansfield, "Block Buster" and "Head In The Clouds" by Johnny Pearson, "Loco Motion" and "Soul Foot Strut" by Dave Gold, "Traffic" and "Challenger" by Alan Hawkshaw, "Short Cut" by James Clarke, "Heavy Traffic" by James Cameron, "Speculation" by David Lindup, "Vegas To LA" by Dick Doerschuk, "Tough Assignment" by Chris Gunning, "Speedway" by Nick Ingman, "String Boogie" by Brian Bennett, and "The Double Take" by Steve Gray.