Variant – Thru The Cosmos [Perigee + Apogee]

This is an excellent review taken from the echospace Bandcamp site, what more needs to be said =)

Variant is a solo project of Stephen Hitchell who is one half of the massively influential Echospace project with DeepChord's Rod Modell. Their landmark album, "The Coldest Season" on the celebrated Modern Love imprint was named album of the year in a variety of magazines around the world and was listed as one of "The Best Albums Of The Decade" in Resident Advisor. The Michigan based duo also record under a a variety of monikers (cv313, deepchord presents echospace, intrusion and phase90) but Stephen uses the Variant project to release his more long-form ambient dub and ambient techno recordings. Variant's albums invoke various celestial phenomena ranging from comets, to stars, to the aurora borealis. The cosmic preoccupation plays out in the music too, which ranges from warm analog space ambient infused with field recordings to more rhythmically active synthesizer loops and drones.

This secondary edition of "thru the cosmos" picks up where "Ison + Spica" left off and features two near 60 min pieces, space music that surrounds..total expansion. Inspired by Larry Niven's "Inconstant Moon," highlights the inevitable ages of further and closer distances traveled..the incessant pull of the moon on a planet impart a kinetic energy that is now heard in a modular form of synthesis. Atmospheric sound worlds are invisible to the naked eye, the ghosts in the machine are the voices we can hear in space...indistinguishable, shimmering and omniscient. This music surrounds and travels, arranged naturally...to breathe...like, flotation through space. Prepare for the ultimate exploration into incessant, gravitational pulls; a true testament of sonic meditation.