Genesis

Album Review

The second album by Berlin-based electronic music guru Craig Padilla, Genesis offers more than the usual noodly drones that all too often pass for modern synthesizer music. Perhaps as a musical pun on the album's title and biblical concept, Genesis trades in the icy modernity of his debut, 2002's Vostok, for a sound that consciously refers back to the beginnings of European electronic music, from Tangerine Dream's pulsating epics (none of the album's four songs are under 13 minutes, and two are over 20) to the archetypal space rock of Klaus Schulze or Cluster. Although fans of Kraftwerk or Neu!-style Krautrock might not be as impressed by this percussion-free music, the overall feel of the album, particularly on the liquid, slowly drifting "Moon Tides" and the extremely Krautrock-inspired "Ascension" (which includes a heavily processed, reverb-heavy guitar alongside the vintage synth sounds), is very much in keeping with the more gentle end of European progressive music of the '70s.