The solo project of Fred Laird, front-man of the psychedelic space nutjobs Earthling Society, Moon of Ostara's The Star Child is, yep, you guessed it, a "proto-druidic hallucinogenic journey into the realms of the star child... influenced by the krautrock of Ash Ra Tempel, Harmonia and Walter Wegmuller's mystical "Tarot" album" in four meditations (aka, extremely long songs). Ostara, for those not au fait with Germanic paganisms (and who amongst us isn't?), is the namesake of the festival of Easter, the first day of spring, and so Laird has put into music that spiritual realm of death and rebirth, the earth goddess spreading her legs, sorry, "opening her gates", for fertility to burst forth in the form of the star child. Amid swirling winds, the first meditation opens with soft keys, gentle drums, a slow slide guitar circling its way through the ether, and a ghostly, reverbed vocal arises before an overdriven guitar and psychedelic sounds emerge, evolve, and, yep, revolve. And it's much the same for the other three mediations, a heady mix of airy and earthy electronic ambient passages and psychedelic guitars, layer upon layer of trippy, rhythmic jams that stretch out across the landscape and into the cosmos, deep into planes far and beyond the realms of human experience. Moog's, Mellotron, Theremin, and all kinds of weirdly wonderful devices have been utilised in Laird's dreamy, esoteric depiction of the mystical. Like Pink Floyd's pre-DSOTM albums with a bit of Jean Michel Jarre and Ozric Tentacles thrown in, this is an album to listen to on a spring evening beneath a cloudless starry sky, a gentle breeze stirring, and let its trance-inducing rhythmic canticles absorb you into the unfolding mysteries of the universe. Available as a limited edition run of 200 CDs, The Star Child will also be available to download as of the 21st May 2012 at their website (below), and is well worth your indulgence, erm, man.
Track Listing:
- The Star Child – part 1
- The Star Child – part 2
- The Star Child – part 3
- The Star Child – part 4
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