Pharaohs
In Oeland

In the end, what Brian Eno and Jon Hassell were looking for, in their daring pan-Atlantic excursions, was just one thing: beauty. The wonder of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and then the Red Sea, stumbling upon the vibrant green of the rainforest and getting lost among the dunes and dust of the Sahara, with the blinding sun shaping everything around you. They weren't alone. In that Fourth World, some friends had stopped as well, Froese, the Talking Heads, and then Peter Gabriel, Jah Wobble, and who knows how many others. Visionaries who wanted to change the course of things and build a new world, both hyper-technological and ancient. Three were perhaps too few.

The Pharaohs are more or less legitimate offspring born from these explorations, and "In Oeland" is their clearest vision yet. If you read the credits, you'll discover that Sam Cooper, Alejandro Cojen, Casey Butler, Diego Herrera, and Andres Renteria hail from L.A., California. Don't trust it. In reality, they are perched above a wandering island hundreds of miles in the hypersphere, suspended between past and future, in the middle of nowhere. There are 7 tracks on this record, which is a sort of midway point between an EP and an album: it's music that goes nowhere, not because it has nothing to say, but because it doesn't have a precise destination, and its reason for existing is the journey.

The opening of Muddy Middle of Nowhere is a ripping epiphany that tears the fabric of our everyday life: a dazzling bolt reveals the tribal dance of Fela Kuti and Tangerine Dream on the Sahara dunes, joined by a sax reminiscent of Bowie - and by the looks of it, they're all there - obviously Berlin period. The same sax that rests on the Mexican guitars of Invisible Mile, where instruments chase and play under the sun that crosses the border from San Diego and settles comfortably in the first bar found on the road, and then down to the Gulf of Southern California, where at Cadeje you can sit and hear the tide and waves slowly rising, with the guitar sketching imaginary and vast landscapes. Then there's the Talking Heads tribute of Oelan Gunda, with many fine guitars and light synths, there's the Australian flight of Air Kiribati and the tropical underwater disco in 4/4 of Coral Heads, until the limping finale of Energy. Here the old sax bids farewell and finds some rest. Or maybe not.

They say the Pharaohs hail from Egypt... but I don't believe they have a home. Their ecstatic music, in which ambient, funk, disco, and krautrock converge, travels and never stops. They play a new and ancient symphony together, and perhaps "In Oeland" is part of that small circle of albums - but we'll only find out in a few years - capable of merging earth and paradise within a few grooves.