Voyage: 2CD Expanded Edition

A longtime drummer for British rock & roll pioneers the Shadows, as well as a highly regarded television and film composer/arranger and a mainstay of the KPM and Bruton Music production libraries, Brian Bennett ventured into disco and funk for a handful of albums during the late 1970s. Voyage (subtitled A Journey into Discoid Funk) was his contribution to the original wave of the space disco subgenre, appearing soon after albums by French acts like Rockets, Droids, and Space, as well as Mecos inescapable discofications of the music from Star Wars. Opener Voyage immediately captures the wonder of the space age, opening with an epic, brassy lead before launching into a driving disco beat and bubbling synths (programmed and played by Francis Monkman), as well as Alan Jones funky bass lines. A few other tracks sound like variations on this template, but the results are dazzling, particularly the airy, swirling Pendulum Force. While Bennetts subsequent album for EMI, released under the project name Heat Exchange, would feature material more explicitly designed for dancing, Voyage is more atmospheric, and really more of a commercial version of his privately issued KPM work. This is most evident in the slow-burning smooth groove of Solstice, an instantly familiar-sounding piece that, like much of Bennetts work from this era, has been sampled countless times by hip-hop producers. Air Quake shakes things up a bit, marrying choppy, fusion-like drum breaks to pulsating sequencers. The calm, reflective Ocean Glide concludes the album with a peaceful soundtrack to the journey back home to Earth. ~ Paul Simpson