Choco - Bubbles In Your Brain? (2014)

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Choco - Bubbles In Your Brain? (2014)

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Manfred Wieczorke and Detlev Schmidtchen were both members of the band "Eloy". 1976 after leaving Eloy, Manfred played several years in the band "Jane". After his split from "Eloy" in 1980, Detlev made his project "Ego". Since 1982 they were working together on some projects. From the end of the 90s till 2002 they had their "Choco time". In those years both were composing a lot of songs, typical "Choco-style". The Scottish "Dino" Neil Douglas wrote and spoke lyrics for six songs in early 2000. Now remastered and for the first time on CD.

A new record by Detlev Schmidtchen and Manfred Wieczorke with lyrics that have been written and performed by Neil John Douglas with additional angel voices by Sarah Douglas. The name of the album is:
Bubbles in the Brain?

First impression:
Fat and heavy sound patterns, driving, moving, haunting, hypnotic, as well melodic, romantic and sometimes very heavy psychedelic, trance rhythms and everywhere you will meet this haunting dark voice from Neil John Douglas. The spiralling synthi sound sometimes works like a vortex and enters the brain. Heavy guitar here, hypnotic beats there. Well done, very very well done boys.

Second impression:
It is a wicked amalgam of finest keyboard layers and synthi sound sculptures (In the Bottle), hypnotic percussion (Scots in the Jungle), sometimes dark and mantric voice and adds of heavy guitar (Mama Hey) and bass (Scots …) ….

The keyboard sounds only sometimes remind me to most successful Eloy themes from the years between 1976 and 1979. Specially the opening of the track RULE OF THUMB reminds me strongly of ATLANTIS AGONY but shifts suddenly with a kind of electronic bass pattern to totally new horizons…. never reached and never explored by ELOY, letting Eloy sound really tranquil…..so instead they travel on different chronoglide skyways which had been and are still regularly used by #Hawkwind (think of the CHOOSE YOUR MASQUES album - Harvey Bainbridge: Dream Worker), Tangerine Dream (think of RICOCHET and ENCORE and CYCLONE - Bent Cold Sideway), remember Adrian Wagner's LAST INCA album and Klaus Schulze's masterpiece DUNE, here Shadows of Ignorance.

Spoken works have always been something very magical and special in rock music: Long ago Jim Morrison haunted the listerners through the nightmare of Horse Latitudes, Orson Welles spoke Edgar Allan Poe Poetry on Alan Parson's Tales of Mystery, Arthur Brown recited Klaus Schulze's poetry on Shadows Of Ignorance, Nik Turner spoke chapters from The Egyptian Book of the Dead on his records or introduced OSIRIS on the REMNANTS OF LIFE album of Osiris The Rebirth, Robert Calvert forced the listeners to follow him through his sometimes surreal and heavy lines of words (The Awakening, Wage War, In the Egg), Jürgen Rosenthal haunted the adepts on Ego On The Rocks: IN AFRICA through nightmare lyrics which had been partly written by Rimbaud. On this album they are mesmerising, haunting - you will probably meet THE VOICE later in your dreams at night.

But the boys do not copy styles or patterns, they adapt to it and define totally own webs of sound - stunning, awesome, mostly deeply psychedelic. Better think of all those mentioned names and add a little more romantic mood and lots of bubbles

This is finest psychedelic ear candy, pure spacemusic. This is not a soft sounding album. It is a heavy and powerful work with witchy spoken mantras. I feel that my synapses are deeply consuming the sound, I feel as if I have eventually reached a fountain with fresh water full of power of Mother Earth and the white and liquid light of the milky way.

All lovers of Hawkwind, Berlin School Electronics, Eloy, Ego On The Rocks, lovers of heavy psychedelic stuff, hey wake up:
YOU HAVE TO GET (INTO) THIS ALBUM IT'S AN ULTIMATE TRIP!

61 minutes have passed by - the album reaches its end….
Puuh. My first impulse: Play it again, tune in again!

by Christian Appelt, amazon

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Choco - Bubbles In Your Brain? (2014)

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Choco - Bubbles In Your Brain? (2014)

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