he setting of Interstellar Memories is the huge spaceship Paradonka, a craft that regularly traverses the galaxy, carrying creatures and cargo to hundreds of distant worlds. Performing under the pseudonym TALES, French keyboard artist Jean-Luc Hervé Berthelot offers the instrumental impressions of a journey on that vessel as it not only passes by intriguing spacial phenomena like Alerya's Cluster and the gigantic star Tanzharan, but also stops at exotic ports of call such as Xakhantra FairyTown and Kankall Eridanii.
Berthelot presents this otherworldly musical adventure through 14 mostly electronic tracks that feature titles like "Aldebaran in Sight" and "Asteroids." Many of the melodies are designed to depict specific scenes or incidents encountered on the voyage, while a few cuts--such as "The Leap in the Dark" and "Millions of Stars in Mind"--are devoted to the psychological impact of the futuristic trek. Four brief interludes sport alien names printed in the rune-like characters of the Ankaleryan alphabet.
The booklet that accompanies Interstellar Memories includes two small, computer-generated blueprints of the Paradonka and a succinct narrative description of the trip, purportedly by one of the passengers on the ship. Both the pictures and the vignette were created by Sebastien Coursol, who also occasionally publishes stories under the pen name Tarkan Shinnerlord.
A synthesized celestial cruise
Synthesizers and similar electronic instruments have been associated with science fiction since the 1950s, when the unearthly wail of the theremin was first heard on the scores for films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and It Came From Outer Space. Although Berthelot utilizes significantly more modern and complex implements in this recording, his keyboard artistry clearly demonstrates that inorganic musical devices can still produce marvelously speculative sounds.
Fans of pioneering space-rock bands like Tangerine Dream will enjoy the tracks "Ankalerye's TerkLands" and "Flight over Deneb Cygni," which generate airy, atmospheric milieus that perfectly capture both the remarkable beauty and sheer grandeur of the heavens. Conversely, the eerie echoes heard on a deserted and potentially dangerous "Unknown Planet," or the foreboding, mystical meter of "Stonehenge Continuum" (which is actually an homage to an earlier TALES album titled Stonehenge for Eternity), are somewhat more mysterious, evoking anxious yet appealing feelings.
Though the short chronicle that supplements the compositions suffers from numerous grammatical errors (presumably due to a poor French-to-English translation), it does manage to appropriately set the scene for the accompanying instrumental excursion. For folks who like electronic music, imaginative world-making and far-reaching astral adventure, Interstellar Memories offers an exceptionally enjoyable celestial cruise.
