Deardorff, Glenn

Artists: Glenn Deardorff
P: 1998
This CD belongs to the rare recordings that really stunned me as a whole after hearing it. Glenn Deardorff is an electronic musician working at NASA Ames, who here presents an excellent overview of music when you somewhat blend together music of David Parsons, the intimate floating soundtextures of Steve Roach's music and those of the best spacemusic-pioneers such as Stearns and Serrie.
Glenn's debut-CD "Primordial Mariner" (with a smashing cover, by the way) sets off in a great spacious way, and very beautifully moves along the edges of space, time and beyond. Glenn has an adventurous way of composing: his inviting, vast but varied soundscapes have a lot of impact and carry an overall cinematic feel, which is nicely emphasized by the help of Steve Roach himself, who did some great additions by doing all spatial enhancements for the album in his own famous Timeroom studio in Tucson.
The sparkling 4th track ("Turbulence Structures") is composed especially as a soundtrack for an animation of modeled turbulence at NASA research. A lot of mystery is encountered when listening, as we head for the far-off outback of our galaxy, sometimes I wondered if also some deep voices of monks (as heard on David Parsons last recordings) might come up, but no, they're absent. But also the hugeness of Roach's "Magnificent Void" comes to mind when Glenn keeps layering spatial sounds and working towards a climax that you might expects but that does't always come. The overall lightness of sound throughout and the great production & mastering of the music absolutely make "Primordial Mariner" something you want to hear and experience over and over again. This intruiging album is clearly inviting itself to be put in the highest regions of intimate space-ambient productions!

1999. Bert Strolenberg