EDGAR FROESE

"Aqua"
 (1974)

Along with "Epsilon in Malaysian pale" this is Froese's best moment of his solo career both as a musician and sound researcher.
The title track begins obviously with some nice water sounds, if you close your eyes you can imagine yourself floating within the deep, add to this some nice analog sounds (VCS3 and Froese's beloved Mellotron) and you can have a picture of what an incredible track this one his.
"NGC 891" is the other stand out track, sounds of traffic and planes come in so now we are in urban ambient territory, Chris Franke's Moog makes its appearance and a bass sequence helps to build the ambience (this track is more Tangerine Dream in nature).
Froese recommends listening to this track on headphones to hear the effects of the artificial head system (a device whose sound quality effect could only be heard on headphones), but i recommend you all to listen to "Aqua" on headphones entirely to fully appreciate it.
I could write more and more about this album for, in my opinion it is one of the most important albums of electronic music ever made , it placed Froese along Klaus Schulze as a big name of the genre. Hard to imagine that that the same man some years later would be responsible for recordings such as "Tyranny of beauty", "Rockoon" , etc...

(c) Manuel Brum