Album Review: Dr. Space, Music to Disappear To and Dr. Space’s Alien Planet Trip Vol. 8 – Space With Bass IV: Purple Rose Powder and Doctors of Space, Wisdom of Clowns
Posted in Reviews on November 1st, 2024 by JJ KoczanThe oeuvre of Portugal-based interstellar synthlord Dr. Space expands like the universe itself; it spreads farther at a seemingly increasing rate, propelled by intangible forces. Known best for his work in the multinational Øresund Space Collective, as well as Black Moon Circle and contributions to albums dating back decades at this point, various collaborations like West, Space and Love with current and former members of Siena Root or his work with New Zealand’s Craig Williamson just this year on Lamp of the Universe Meets Dr. Space‘s Enters Your Somas (review here). He even had a column here when that was a thing. Sometimes it’s an ongoing project, sometimes it’s a one-off, but it’s almost always something, and what that ethic has allowed Dr. Space — né Scott Heller — to do is amass a multicontextual, highly varied catalog that nonetheless unites around the theme of exploration.
His latest three offerings — and I say that tentatively because you never really know when the next one is coming — are Dr. Space’s Alien Planet Trip Vol. 8 – Space With Bass IV: Purple Rose Powder, part of two series subset to his solo work, the new Dr. Space-proper LP, Music to Disappear To, with its striking cover art above, and the collaborative Doctors of Space‘s Wisdom of Clowns, which pairs Heller with guitarist/synthesist Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady) for two-plus hours of cosmic outreach, and something you need to understand is that most of what they are is ‘latest.’
I don’t mean that to take away from the music being made — period — or the admirable and raw creativity that Heller‘s output so reliably displays, whether it’s full-band improv psych or the throbbing drones, pulsations and synth sweeps of “Life is Hell” (20:01) setting a somewhat darker tone for the start of Music to Disappear To but finding solace in a second-half organ solo, singing bowls and other gleeful plays with arrangement before the despondent and somewhat vague spoken word returns. But they happen to be three albums that, between them, emphasize divergent influences and aspects of (some of) what Dr. Space does, and they’re roughly concurrent in all being released the same month. So far as I know and as the music indicates, there’s nothing directly tying them together. They’re not a series, they’re just the three records — maybe not even the only three — that Dr. Space put out in October. That and the differentiation of intent behind them are why they’re being grouped together now.
As noted, Music to Disappear To begins with “Life is Hell,” and that song is an encompassing improv manifesto of sound recorded throughout 2023 unfolding over multiple movements. Whatever Heller felt needed to be said — literally spoken — on it, it’s hard to decipher as his voice is buried in the mix and effects are all around, etc., but it’s worth noting that’s the only time anything is said on the album at all. “Life is Hell” is the opener and longest track (immediate points), and a focal point that defines the mood of what follows in “Smile and Rotate” (17:02), “Music to Disappear To” (14:54) and “Frozen Hypothalamus Pie” (15:02), even as each takes off on its own experimental sojourn.
“Smile and Rotate” gradually evolves from minimal drone to stark and lonely synthesizer boops to something that makes that same melancholia dance, while the title-track lives up to its name in its initial low tone and static noise — lest we forget that the force accelerating the expansion of the universe is called ‘dark energy’ — turning sci-fi in the midsection but holding that undertone until the final sweep. The evocation of ice in “Frozen Hypothalamus Pie” is a clever suggestion to suit the keyboardy sound, probably a reference, but doesn’t necessarily account for the tape-loop-sounding experimentation of the middle third or the conversation that seems to be happening perhaps between neurons as much as different vintage synthesizers. It is both Music to Disappear To and the place into which one might, at least for an hour, escape and find comfort.
Dr. Space’s Alien Planet Trip Vol. 8 Space With Bass IV: Purple Rose Powder tells you at least part of what you need to know right off. It’s Space, with bass. Where Music to Disappear To was entirely solo, Space With Bass IV pairs Heller with Hasse Horrigmoe as collaborator on a 2023 recording across four pieces: “Draptomaniac” (13:02), “Slowker” (6:49), “Purple Rose Powder” (32:11) and “Surfing the Sea of Bass” (13:31), the last of which was tracked remotely between the two earlier this year. Horrigmoe is a regular feature in Øresund Space Collective and was a founding member of Tangle Edge in Norway; this is by no means his first Alien Planet Trip, and he’s been involved in Doctors of Space on multiple sessions as well, including Wisdom of Clowns.
The chemistry and fluidity as “Draptomaniac” evolves is palpable. Horrigmoe and Heller are each on their own journey, but they remain complementary in sound between loops and effects and other spacey noisemakings, and “Draptomaniac” fills in space that the subsequent “Slowker,” aberrantly brief but not unprecedentedly so at six minutes, leaves open with a slow-undulating windy swirl behind the quiet bassline. As he does at several points across these records, Dr. Space ends “Slowker” by pushing the synth forward, creating more of a wash, then bringing everything down together, and his doing so reminds of the instrumental role the studio itself plays in making this material, which is inevitably carved out of longer stretches of jamming and improvisation.
“Purple Rose Powder” is inevitably a standout, being practically a full-length EP unto itself, but it is appreciable more for genuinely being a single work, a linear progression happening between movements of synth, loops, effects and I don’t know what. It is proggy and patient in kind, and it earns the choral mellotronic sounds of its finish, the bass once again receding at the end. And the recorded-later “Surfing the Sea of Bass” takes a line from Harrigmoe as its center and follows where the groove wants to go, in this case out over a shimmering ocean. Dr. Space‘s 2023 offering, Suite for Orchestra of Marine Mammals (review here) or Doctors of Space‘s earlier 2024 release, Adventures in the Deep Dark Seas of Sound, feel like relevant touchstones, but if it’s warm vibe you want, it’s there for the taking. If it’s Dr. Space‘s watery period, fair enough.
As they’ve moved away from recording and putting out monthly jams in the raw and more toward building those jams into improv-based studio albums, Doctors of Space have flourished as a project. Heller‘s approach is consistently malleable to those with whom he’s collaborating. Horrigmoe returns on Wisdom of Clowns, as noted, but what began as the duo of Martin Weaver and Dr. Space has let its growth and evolution play out almost in real time through their steady string of releases, and the textures the three players conjure on the opening “Wisdom of Clowns” (21:22), “Needs of the One” (38:44), which would be a highlight even if it wasn’t a Star Trek reference, “Mystic Challenger” (27:27), “Ascari” (20:10), and the concluding, indeed funkified “Dance Floor Hit (For Freaky Creatures)” (21:41) provide worlds to get lost in, whether they’re more active, like “Needs of the One,” which has a beat to remind you krautrock invented New Wave, or “Mystic Challenger,” which has an almost Nintendoan — if more manic — feel in its second half. It’s a ways from chiptune space rock, but pretty darn close to cosmic dub.
Coming in ahead of party time in “Dance Floor Hit (For Freaky Creatures),” the penultimate “Ascari” builds on some of the midi-type stylizations in “Mystic Challenger.” After opening with a proggier wash of synth and guitar/bass, the song brings looped synthesizer chime sounds ahead of the strummed repetitions, the concluding organ and synth not quite a bookend because the guitar started out, but a smooth shift into the organ that begins the closer. The beat kicks in before “Dance Floor Hit (For Freaky Creatures)” is 30 seconds old, and it treats funk with an oldschool-prog reverence. The groove becomes a sacred thing, and Weaver seems a bit to honor Eddie Hazel in the midsection burner of a solo without giving up a mellow sensibility or the flow of the rhythm behind it. Even weirdos gotta boogie. It’s as fitting an ending as one might ask, a reminder that it’s okay to have a good time as you plunge deeper into the outer recesses of the sonic unknown.
On some level, that is what’s happening on each of these releases. Heller under the guise of Dr. Space is well familiar in this terrain and as a veteran player, bandleader and producer, wields the power of suggestion as a part of an expansive and growing aesthetic, while adventures in arrangement continue to push the scope of ‘his thing,’ in terms of sound. A given listener might find themselves transported to other places by this material than what I’ve described here, might hear something else in it. I don’t think that’s wrong. When you make as much room for the audience to dwell in the material as Heller, Horrigmoe and Weaver craft on Wisdom of Clowns, Horrigmoe and Heller bring together for Purple Rose Powder and Heller fosters solo on Music to Disappear To, it should be no surprise that people will have their own interpretations.