(2021) Joel Vandroogenbroeck - Far View  


Review:
Distinctively exotic drifts of library music suffused with psych and next wave ambience, all collected from Joel Vandroogenbroeck’s cult-classic Coloursound releases of the 1980s. Leagues beyond the top-shelf work he’d done throughout the 70s with kraut-progsters Brainticket: these were new musical idioms to be explored. All tracks remastered from their original analog tapes! A onetime member of psych / space rock outfit Brainticket, with a catalogue reaching back to the ‘50s, Joel Vandroogenbroek was a Belgian composer, engineer, producer and multi-instrumentalist particularly beloved for his armful of albums with Switzerland’s Coloursound Library. Joel passed away in December, 2019 while this collection was in assembly, and Far View now arrives as a bountiful posthumous testament to his rich musical imagination, omnivorously drawing from myriad disciplines of jazz, rock, and more far flung styles of sub-continental Indian and Far Eastern traditions, plus electronic spheres. A few of Joel’s later, electronic leaning releases, have long been in our wants list, so this collection is totally up our street, offering a historic peer back down the kaleidoscope of his vision where one will discover a fascinating cross-section of his catalogue, taking in genteel, prog-tinged 4th world intimations on ‘Fairy Tale’ and thru to the fluttering sehtars of ‘Biblical Band’, while ‘Easy To Love’ exemplifies his eaze at turning a hand to sweet lounge jazz, ‘’Wono Sari’ looks out to chiming Far eastern modes, and the likes of ‘Chipland Liquids’ and ‘New Wave Rock’ sizzle with carefully crafted electronics.





Track Listing:
1. Fairy Tale (3:06)
2. Rocks (3:06)
3. Group Meditation (14:26)
4. Summer Clouds (3:17)
5. Mutation (4:03)
6. Oil Tankers (2:47)
7. Biblical Band (3:18 )
8. Papyrus of Ani (3:12)
9. Easy to Love (3:31)
10. Procession (5:02)
11. Wono Sari (3:00)
12. Rock Program (2:26)
13. Chipland Liquids (2:39)
14. New Wave Rock (2:47)
15. Far View (3:06)


Media Report:
Genre: electronic, experimental, psychedelic rock
Country: Belgium
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits