Stellarscope This is Who We Are

Opening with Ready to blow, which has the drums and heavy guitar reverb, of a classic Rock anthem. The band adds a layer of keyboard to generate a sense of outer-space. I was reminded somwhat of Hawkwinds’- Silvermachine, as the track develops to a fuzz-back guitar virtuoso, as the drums incessantly keep the track moving forward.

The superb, Just Like Flowers, ripped me out of the kicked back opening couple of numbers. The three and a half minutes of high energy rock blasts the album in to a new gear.

So Blind, with the picked guitar notes landed me safely back on a new planet with its calming dreamy keyboard and creatively blurred resonance.

En el Principio, has the band in great form, as the reverbed vocal of Tom Lugo, is accompanied by Bob Forman maintaining a cymbal laden veil, with the bass lines of Rob DeFlaviis clearing a path through the mist.

The 8th Realm, finds Stellarscope demonstrating their ability to feed various moods in to one track, as heavy rock riffs are combined with the ethereal high pitch of a guitar and a magical mix of keyboard.

And so we land back on planet earth with the instrumental Queremos Paz, a fine end to the album with the message of peace and end to conflict, as we hear the dulcet tones of Bush in a broadcast message drowned out by the power of music, as the song fades out to We want peace – Queremos Paz.

The 10 tracks on the LP have been selected well and the sense of a storyline runs through This is who we are *. I was left with an overall impression of an exploration, some places friendly others chaotic, as Stellarscope took me on a voyage of discovery round the galaxy.

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Thanks for sending over the LP Tom.

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Stellarscope

They are a well structured band, with the experience behind them to take on new directions and challenges whilst retaining the core of the output. They craft psychedelia on to tightly constructed rock songs, which take them in to a completely new and unexpected direction.

Their range of instrumentation makes Stellarscope sound like a band with more than three musicians, as they weave a sonic shroud over fast guitar riffs and heavy rock drum rolls. They use delay and loop back to dramatic effect as the songs take on a space-trip quality. They resist the temptation to run these in to the 20 minute tracks and keep everything well under control, making this accessible music to a wide range of music fans.

With a new LP just released, This is who we are which takes the band on to a new path of musical discovery, it will be interesting to see how 2010 pans out.

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I have a copy of the LP, which Tom sent over to me and I will get a review up in short order.