Technical Space Composer's Crew - Canaxis 5

CARRIED TO EXECUTION, HEELS DRAGGING IN MUD

What year did Brian Eno coin Ambient, 1978? Two years after that he'd venture the world, exploring temperate terrain with Harold Budd, Jon Hassell, and others. Little did he, or anyone else, know that Technical Space Composer's Crew beat him to the punch by over a decade with their sole venture Canaxis 5. Doing so with contorted atmospherics, moody tape loops, and organic foreign infusion that eclipsed Eno's placid material with ease. Not to mention, primarily with 'Boat Woman Song,' something far more engaging on a conceptual level, transporting third-world rituals atop gaunt, medieval dirges. The inevitable psychedelic offering - one where the LCD trip always goes awry - even brings about comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey's opening cinematic. Wherein an alien substance forcibly intrudes itself upon primitive beings. Much like what Holger Czukay and Rolf Dammers do here, introducing their Sound Collage techniques - which are remarkably-advanced for 1969, due in large part to a pallid, measured tone artists like William Basinski and Tim Hecker would incorporate decades later - to lands of people who've but no choice but to worship this newfound omnipresence.

Canaxis 5 is fascinating in just how dire the circumstances surrounding it seem to be. While 'Boat Woman Song' heralds much of the praise, and rightfully so, 'Shock Eyes Ammunition' still travels through the same, death-strewn lands. Sparse Asian strings, offset by droning figures humming in the distance, evokes such ominous dread. Like an execution in waiting, as you travel through swampland in a rickety wooden boat. Sunset a passing comfort. Canaxis 5 is unforgiving in that sense, brutal in composition, thoroughly ahead of anything remotely disguised as atmospheric in the 1960's. 'Boat Woman Song' is such an evocative experience, a moving image that never settles in lazy loops for too long, layering passages across one another in a way that's truly entrancing. Though the tone is stark in contrast, I'm reminded of the KLF's Chill Out in how time and transit is handled; constant and unraveling. It's funeral music, yearned on by those associated with your killers. Even that of a children's choir emerges in the rift, singing over untuned foreign guitars that teeter like a futile run towards escape. Canaxis 5 is beautifully arranged, delicate and dismal, a template for modern producers in the field of Sound Collage.