Orbit Service
Songs Of Eta Carinae

A hypnotic journey beyond reality towards unknown shores, immense spaces and tiny people, screams lost in the void, paranoia and hallucinations, space and mental wrecks halfway between psychedelia and space rock.
Interesting? You bet! These Orbit Service have really done a good job, behind massive doses of space-rock and a style somewhat close to the good Radiohead, especially in the vocal lines. The music of this band is quite rarefied - and in this it certainly reminds of the Pink Floyd in Echoes - and above all spacious, or rather, spatial: open, vast, it plays a lot on the contrast between silence and sound.

The instrumentation consists of a guitar, clearly well-effected, a really "thin" and minimal rhythm section bass+drums, a synth that shifts from classical piano to the most futuristic synths. The voice, often surrounded by due reverbs and echoes, is a strong point: tragic, strong, emotional, heartfelt.

The story behind this album is that of a space wreck: it opens with Wolves, damn beautiful in its simple loops, the awareness of loss, and then it’s all a crescendo of contrasting emotions, sometimes relaxing (the long Asphyxia), other times paranoid, delirious (A Hallucination, Sparrows), to culminate in the deep anger and strength of Halos, when the only lifeline, the only hope for the space wreckers, is now far gone, lost: and from here follow the concluding Bruises, melodramatic and resigned, dominated by sound voids and the multicolored crescendo of keyboard and guitar (which here reminds one of the Hawkwind of Space Ritual), and the last, minimal No Longer Do We Dream, a fitting epilogue to an extraordinary gem and one of the best surprises of this 2006.

9-/10