Postvorta

Postvorta was recorded during the summer of 1993, Steve writing the tracks and making the initial recordings on his Fostex four track machine. A lack of funds and the absence of a synthesizer meant he had to use his electric guitar and a menagerie of ethnic musical instruments to create all the sounds, to which he added the mid-nineties Mooch trademark of short wave radio recordings. A Boss digital delay allowed him to multiply his guitar, Hillage fashion. The school for which he worked owned some educational music software, and this he was able to use to program drum patterns and make sequences.

Links with Andy Garibaldi and Taste Records owner Bill Wood meant that Postvorta was the first Mooch album to be released on CD. The 1992 recording 3001 would appear later. The track titles were loosely based on one of Steve's science fiction concepts - a first contact between the alien euyyueh on their planet, circling the star Postvorta.

Postvorta was welcomed for its unique sound: ambient music with a human heart, said the Musicians’ Network; nothing like it in its field - echoes of Hillage, ambient, world and more, said Andy Garibaldi; very trippy... strangely attractive ambience from a much loved space guru, said Freakbeat. Radio 1 DJ Mark Radcliffe was also a fan, playing tracks on his late night show.

The album also featured other musicians, whom Steve was keen to work with. Conan McPhee (son of Tony, of the Groundhogs) contributed bass on one track, while the owners of Nepalese importers World On Wheels, Hazel Dean and Mike Wright, played singing bowls and temple cymbals on the ice-cold and trippy final track.

After Postvorta, Steve recorded two more albums, before embarking on the penultimate mid-nineties psych recording, Starhenge. This recording would crystalise the Mooch sound in an album of ethnic, free-floating, trancey ambience that found favour in many quarters. Starhenge is a jewel, said Daydream; more excellent ambience, remarked Cybernoise; some great dreamy textures and guitar work, said Future Music.

Steve roped in four crucial collaborators for this album – brothers Cal and Garry Lewin on synths, who played on three tracks, and Paul Coates and Phil Watson, who played alongside Cal and Garry on the final track. Cal and Garry would become firm friends of Steve, and musical lynchpins in subsequent recordings, though they had briefly appeared on 1994’s The Crypt Of Artificial Intelligences. Cal’s skill with his digital keyboard and Garry’s almost supernatural ability with his Korg MonoPoly added considerable beauty to the album.

The original digital recordings of these two albums have been remastered by Steve for this release. No additional recordings exist now from the Postvorta sessions, but Steve has found a never heard before bonus track for Starhenge, recorded in the same year, a piece entitled Jericho.


Reviews - Postvorta

"This is beautiful! Ambient music with a human heart."
Musicians' Network

"Postvorta is an essential CD. Nothing like it in its field; echoes of Hillage, ambient, world and more. Steve at his most musically accomplished." 
M.L.M.

"Postvorta is an original sounding ambient-fuelled feast of darting pipe sounds, and a rather mellow and oddly progressive hypnotic tribal drumbeat. Ethnic bleepness and tribal synthesizers. Rather Hillage influenced we feel - with lashings of Central American style flutes, Egyptian reed pipes, Balinese whistles, Tibetan singing bowls and bells. Eastern astral planing of the Ullulator/Oroonie variety, and very highly recommended too."
Organ

"Postvorta is more mind expanding music in an ethnic mode; alot of Eastern influences and instrumentation. Almost religious or ritualistic in nature, acting on a spiritual plain. The sound-skrit to some forgotten prayer, an echo of some distant past. Eerie."
Bizarre 5

"Postvorta. This soundscape is quite minimal and spacey, combining futuristic synth sounds with ethnic real world instruments on long, drawn-out voyages. Mooch take you from this world to the stars. Have a few beers, turn down the lights and just relax..."
G.N.

"More excellent ambience..."
Cybernoise

"Very trippy... strangely attractive ambience from a much loved space guru."
Freakbeat

"MOOCH: Postvorta. Using a vast combination of drums, synths, guitars and percussion, plus balalaika, Egyptian reed pipes, bass guitar, Tibetan singing bowls, cymbals, singing bells, voice samples and electronics, this is music that is stunning and definitely in a world of its own. Track one starts with a brilliant, almost Can/Faust-like drum pattern, so simple but so effective. Over this a wide range of multi-layered sound textures and sonic landscapes dive and soar over, in and around the mix creating a totally hypnotic and magical music that draws you right in and doesn't let go, gradually dying away. Track 2 kicks off with electronics before a gorgeous echo-guitar, synths, echoed samples and layers of electronics usher in another superb rhythm pattern, this time based around delicate use of cymbals under a vast echoed electronic/voice sound collage with occasional additional rhythms and sound textures flying off in all directions as the melody soars through the mix. Yet again, it creates a mind-blowing composition with so much going on and such a high level of enjoyment that you'll want to play it over and over again; and we're only on track 2. This moves on to instrumental passages with Steve Hillage style echo guitar, bells, synths, percussion, flutes, in a '70's meets '90's cross of Gong, Hillage, early Kraftwerk and instrumental John Martyn, totally uniquely structured, melodically brilliant and stunningly produced. From here on, you enter a vast world of melodic, rhythmic, multi-layered, multi-textured and mind-expanding music. Devoid of clichees, this is fresh and exciting new music that will sound great for years to come."
C.D.S.


'Extended Life' begins with what sounds like an out of tune radio full of bleeps and static before calming down to pulsing echoing tones. A high hat and bass drum rhythm start up. There's all sorts of weirdness going on in the background giving it something of a fevered dream feeling. Nearer the end some gentle guitar licks add a little detail. The title track uses looped ethnic percussion and bells to set the scene before rhythmic space guitar, a good bass line and steady drumbeat whip up quite a groove. There's a touch of Ash Ra Tempel about it all from around the 'Seven Up' period. Real freaked out stuff. Things momentarily subside to gentle percussion until strange vocals can be heard rising and falling then the psychedelic montage of guitars and electronics return. Another break for weirdness which becomes increasingly 'spaced out'; electronics, flute and more ethnic percussion combining to conjure sounds from some ancient Buddhist temple. What a wonderful contrast to earlier in the track. Running water and a rapid looped dulcimer type sound, effectively forming a sequence, initially acts as the backbone for 'Winged Beings'. A slow melody unwinds as the dulcimer subsides. It's all rather tranquil but also moody. The dulcimer sequence returns once more to finish. An infectious head nodding rhythm strikes up for 'Biomass Transputer'. Some sort of processed wind instrument wails over the top whilst snatches of ethnic sampled chatter come and go underneath. We finish this first disc with the over twenty minute 'Human Euyyueh'. Chimes ring out then very gradually cosmic twitters arrive, a bass beat and all manner of additional syncopation upping the pace. Little echoing guitar licks add a real tripped out feel as does some unintelligible, faintly Eastern sounding vocal colouring. It's sort of like early Hawkwind meets Manuel Gottsching, or even 'Inside' type Eloy but without the vocals. The chimes return in the eighteenth minute and take us to the end.

David Law / Synth Music Direct

It was the twentieth century's Dr. Strangelight who first conceived the idea of expanding himself in space and in time; for Einstein inspired him. Indeed, he was Albert's friend, and also the friend of radioactivity pioneers Marie and Pierre Curie, and of Madame Wu.

Taking alien knowledge of the starhenge, built when the Earth was forming by members of the Ranax system, Dr. Strangelight used atomic numbers to calculate the frequency of the energy needed to expand his consciousness forward fifty centuries and outward nine parsecs. But he made himself in the process - quite accidentally - an avatar of the Egyptian god Osiris, and thus came to the attention of both the Ranax aliens and those of other stars, such as the telepathic winged beings of Postvorta. In such unwitting ways hewas trapped, reconstitued by means of radio transmissions, and then sent to the Earth of the early fourth millenium, where, again accidentally, he found himself constrained in France.

But this was not the end of the story. Whilst trying to escape his alien bonds he heard music. This music moved him. The emotions aroused were so strong they rearranged the electronic networks around him, and allowed a portion of his self - all his memories of Abu Hureya and of Catal Huyuk, and later of Romania and Bulgaria - to escape into the electric network of brain-maps and silicon substrate. And thus a new culture was born. It was not a visual culture; no writing or image did it use; rather it was an audio culture. It could only be transmitted, and thus experienced, by means of sound; by music, voice, and the noises of the natural world: and of the universe.

Was this a world in which nuclear holocaust had been avoided? Chernobyl and Sizewell were distant memories, but there were mad leaders in Australia and in Bali. They could destroy the world. And so it was that Dr. Strangelight realised that his cosmic task was to bring peace by means of music.

Reviews - Starhenge

"MOOCH: Starhenge. Most of this CD revolves around creating a mood with a particular set of soundscapes and then developing this mood as the piece progresses by adding and subtracting instruments and layers, thus subtly changing the nature of the music as it progresses. This method works to brilliant effect throughout a CD that is both spacey and rhythmic, although throughout its length the rhythms are fairly gentle, but work because they are predominantly acoustic drum/percussive in nature and are generally of Middle Eastern origin, fitting perfectly with the music that unfolds all around. Take tracks 1/2, for example. Begins with an Arabic chant, undulating bass, distant strummed guitar, whispered percussion, tiny kybd stabs and an exotic, flowing Eastern sound underneath, a brief track that leads into track 2 which starts with sampled radio voices, gentle Eastern percussion rhythms, a lone space synth that soars and flows around a landscape of distant cyclic choral voices, as layers and soundbites of stringed instruments and electronics develop and unfold, and it is this slowly shifting musical universe that takes us through the 15 min composition. Track 3 begins with more distant voices, string synth, delicate acoustic guitar, background Eastern music samples and proceeds on a magnificently moody 4 min delight. Track 4 begins with layers of subtly soaring synths flying around the mix while Eastern-tinged drums and percussion weave slowly rhythmic layers underneath, and a shimmering, echoed electric guitar adds to the panorama with the cosmic synths taking the lead role as a unique slice of rhythmic space music develops, full-sounding Eastern-tinged ethereal magic over 23+ mins. Tracks 5 and 6 follow a similar path with different settings, retaining the same type of sonic heart, and the whole CD is just a beauty to behold but most definitely ethnic-electronic music at its best."
C.D.S.


'Starhenge' and the opener 'Catal Huyuk'. Quiet, unintelligible chanting, a steady bass pulse and electronics mix together creating a dreamy feeling. The sound of strange creatures howling provides an atmospheric opening to the title track over which a futuristic radio transmission materialises then soft melodic pads. A steady rhythm gently takes things forward but really this is just as sleepy as the opener. In the fifth minute a curious lead line (God knows on what instrument) adds to the pleasant atmos still further. 'Osiris' makes use of yet more ethnic vocal samples over a very deep looped bass rumble (providing the rhythm) through contrasting high register electronics. It was reminding me of something but it took a while before I located the comparison- Popol Vuh. The subtlest of guitar colouring completes a quite beautiful picture. 'Culture' is again all swirling echoing psychedelics. By the fifth minute what sounds as if it could be mellotron and other soft string pads give things an even more laid back blissed out feel which basically continues through for the next eighteen minutes. Chilled out stuff or what! 'Jericho', even though wasn't on the original album (so making its first appearance here) and is completely electronic, still has that same dreamy feel. 'Abu Hureya' gets straight into a shuffling rhythm. Various vocal samples, both Eastern and Western, combine as the intensity gradually starts to increase until my feet were moving to the groove and head nodding pleasantly to the decidedly tribal sounding vibe. 'Dr Strangelight' on the other hand is all together, well, stranger! Creaking abounds like hearing complaining stretched ropes on some, other than our own presence, abandoned tall-ship. Metallic tinklings form a loop and are accompanied by a bass pulse, all going together to create a feeling of lonely desolation. Senses are heightened as we listen to our own heartbeat. What sounds like tropical birds hints at us being in a more equatorial area of the planet. It's a very abstract track but certainly paints vivid pictures - not all of them pleasant.

David Law / Synth Music Direct