Steve Moore: Light Echoes

Steve Moore, keyboardist in celebrated progressive synth duo Zombi, has built a captivating solo career on the side. His electronic odysseys reference everything from pioneering synthesizer maestros such as Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre, ’70s and early ’80s horror and glitzy TV soundtracks, proto-trance, and slinky European disco. Light Echoes is another dazzling and irresistibly compelling work from Moore, a kaleidoscopic expedition of firmamental gorgeousness, where space is definitely the place, and pulsating galaxies of kosmiche keyboards and coruscating electronics provide a hypnotic synthscaped sojourn.

Light Echoes is borne on languid analog washes (heavy on the ’70s German meditations), with Moore modulating the texture and tone, and looping and extending the celestial rhythmic ripples to explore mind-expanding astral byways. However, although Light Echoes surges with cosmic abandon, it also maintains an inwardly focused warmth, one set to enthrall as much as enfold. The cascading delicacy of “Light Echoes” unfurls with a heady ’70s echo, and the Eno-esque ambience of “Light Echoes II” floats freely through the constellations.

Moore’s retro fascinations are strong throughout, with subtle shifts in mood on “Protomorphosis” and the stunning 28-minute finale, “Ancient Shorelines II”, creating richly orchestrated tides that are both spellbinding and original. Still, Light Echoes is no mere pastiche of a bygone electronic age. It orbits the past, fuelled by stacks of old school, minimalist synth, but it thrums with a forward-thinking pulse — an interstellar, enterprising search for hitherto undiscovered panoramas.