The Cosmic Memoirs of the Late Great Rupert J. Rosinthorpe＜Colored Vinyl＞

The long-titled The Cosmic Memoirs of the Late Great Rupert J. Rosinthorpe brings the long-running Drexciya legacy toward its waning conclusion appropriately. Granted, the cosmic motifs of this Shifted Phases-credited album may be figuratively light years away from the aquatic realms of the Drexciya albums, but the two projects have much more in common than an H.P. Lovecraftian sense of otherworldliness. Though the details are sketchy and shrouded in puzzlement, The Cosmic Memoirs of the Late Great Rupert J. Rosinthorpe is actually of Drexciyan origin despite the Shifted Phases billing. After establishing itself as part of the Detroit techno collective Underground Resistance in the mid-'90s, Drexciya expanded, moving to the Berlin-based Tresor label and spawning kin. Shifted Phases is one of those kin, and it's arguably the one that most closely resembles its ancestor. Like Drexciya's early work as documented on the double-disc Quest collection, Shifted Phases presents a range of dancefloor-tempo electro-techno tracks, and unlike some of Drexciya's later work and its other kin, Shifted Phases never meanders away from the dancefloor toward either brazen experimentation or armchair leisureliness. A few of the most straightforward tracks here ("Solar Wind," "White Dwarf," "Implosive Regions," "Crossing of the Sun-Ra Nebula," "Scattering Pulsars") sound remarkably like mid-'90s Drexciya. Only during some of the intermittent tracks, like "Dance of the Celestial Druids" and "Alien Vessel Distress Call," does Shifted Phases depart from its origins, embracing instead a free-form style that's somewhat jarring. Thus, since this album seems almost like a throwback to Drexciya's beginning as a lo-fi electro-techno act, The Cosmic Memoirs is a fitting consummation to the shadowy Detroit act. This is particularly so because the album humbly shows no trace of its origins (the production credited perplexingly enough to Dimensional Waves) except for the trademark musical style, which influenced a subsequent generation of neo-electro producers, none of whom could conjure such a distinctly Drexciyan style as this. ~ Jason Birchmeier