The Orion Years

Age is the nom de plume of one Thomas Heckmann, whose RAUM remains one of the great unsung ambient/techno releases of the 1990s. Heckmann started out as a dancefloor terrorist for Force Inc. in the early '90s--that pioneering label returned the favor by releasing his Age material on this trippy set. Concocted with a plethora of analog and digital equipment, THE ORION YEARS is a travelogue through nine tracks of captivating ambient techno, with beats that squelch with an earthy analog fervor, and sequences reminiscent of the best Germanic moments of antecedents Klaus Schulze, Manuel Gottsching, Kraftwerk, and Edgar Froese. The lengthy burps, buzzes and fuzzes of "Parallelwelt" are like Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" realized for the digital age, a trek along the silicon synapses of newly built machines, while "Big E" is true aural ecstasy; pinging drum machines and muffled string pulses interwoven with a techno march of raw, analog sequencers and space-age thrusts. THE ORION YEARS is utopian techno for the new age.