Real Life
Journey of the Carcharadon

THE REVIEW

It might be a lack of vitamins, it might be a weak constitution: every three months I get a quick and violent breakout around my lips. Zovirax, they advised me. Sixteen euros for a tiny tube of white paste that contains less than what toothpaste is needed on a toothbrush. Zovirax, or Cycloviran.
"Excuse me, how much does Cycloviran cost?"
Again, sixteen euros. For a microscopic tube. I compare the ingredients: everything is identical. They're even manufactured in the same facility. Only the name varies.

And one might think that "Journey..." was assembled in the same facility from which the exceptional "Psychonavigation" by Laswell-Namlook came out. Yet this is another case of simultaneous discovery by researchers who don't know each other: there is the same imagination, the identical intimacy of calm rhythms, and the same serene cruises along organic processes of erosion and evolution.

"Journey" ignores the anxiety of the news and aims straight at the eternal reggae sway of the cosmos: "The world moves on a woman's hips, it moves, jumps, and bounces" (Talking Heads, 1979), "The world is a ball, a ball in a game without rules" (Echo and the Bunnymen, 1987).

This music of effects and studied relationships between short phrases and sustained notes belongs very much to its time. The immediate familiarity this human-faced, warmly nuanced electronic music suggests disproves the presumed, unbridgeable gap between us and machines. "Journey..." opens a breach in the wall of the cynical listener with the speed of a blowtorch against a forest of ice stalactites. It is the intuitive knowledge of human mental and emotional processes that this record has, which allows this immediate contact and creates a persistent bond. It is chamber music in the psychedelic tradition of "Relics", "Rubycon", and "Rainforest": classical, composed, it wraps around you like a blanket, extinguishing that human torch of worries and frustrations that you are every moment of your day.

There are about ten things for which this is the ideal soundtrack - and at least five are legal. And, needless to say, how much do you think it costs? Sixteen euros.