Way Out Sound from In

DJ and musician Richard Norris is probably best known as half of the '90s techno duo the Grid, but since that band's demise he's kept busy making interesting neo-prog and neo-psych music and remixing lots of artists, both in tandem with Erol Alkan as Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve (the former) and solo under the name the Time & Space Machine (the latter). His solo work harks back to his early days as label manager at Bam Caruso, where they cornered the market on cool psych reissues in the mid-'80s, and The Way Out Sound from In, a collection of his remixes of tracks by fellow psych dreamers, is a fine representation of where his head resides in 2014. He takes already woozy tracks by Jagwar Ma and Temples and stretches them out, while adding little splashes of hypnotic and trippy sounds. He takes more straight-ahead songs by the Sufis and Cheval Sombre and dubs them out in a cloud of smoke and mirrors, gives tracks by Psychemagik and a Mountain of One a minimal techno overhaul, and most impressively, shapes Warpaint's "Disco//Very" into a bubbling, steaming neo-disco floor-filler that casts an unbreakable spell of sultry seduction. Ample Play deserves credit for gathering up all these fine examples of how Norris, as the Time & Space Machine, can turn really good psych pop tracks into really good danceable psych pop tracks. Any band looking to work that kind of alchemy would be wise to study this disc closely. Or just save the time and trouble by dropping Norris a line. ~ Tim Sendra|