T-30 Control - Blade Of The Sun (CD 2003)

T-30 control is a synth duo of Vincent Rees and Peter Smith. On Blade of the Sun they offer a set of short electronic tracks plus one long epic called "Sunphazer Suite" that features Nik Turner doing "Blade Chant" (!) (spoken word actually). They state to be influenced by 70's German Electronic Music, Brian Eno and Hawkwind, among others. No wonder with a set of influences like this one that the music, for the most part, is of totally trippy, cosmic variety that sometimes reminds on spacey synthesizer work on Hawkwind albums, while at other times features some underlying (but not prominent) modern rhythms, really taking it all straight to Anubian Lights territory. The first couple of tracks are dominated by synthesized strings, creating some sort of dramatic effect. The beginning of the first track could be even mistaken for a 70's Klaus Schulze number. Starting from "Too Near the Sun" things become more rhythmic, technoish beats combined with strings, effects and various synth sounds, both lead and background ones. "Eternity Is Waiting" is pretty restrained, with no rhythms, but with some nice arpeggios, repeated spoken word samples and a tad melancholic mood. "Times Past" features piano playing combined with the same samples that were heard in the previous track. It's the most classically oriented piece. We are slowly climbing towards "Sunphazer Suite" and here, folks, is where we step with both feet into space! This is really the highlight of the entrire album. The whole track is rhythmless (except for some sequenced rhythms in the second part) and features otherwordly, dark, oozing synthesizers combined at some moment with Nik Turner's vocal performance. Really out-there and very much to my liking! T-30 Control is an interesting project and a must if you enjoy cosmic type of synth music