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Children of the Bong - Sirius Sounds


Guest Astro Cortex

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Guest Astro Cortex

Children of the Bong - Sirius Sounds (1995 Planet Dog)

 

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1. 07:16 Polyphase

2. 11:43 Ionospheric State

3. 07:53 Interface Reality

4. 08:21 The Veil...

5. 08:40 Underwater Dub

6. 08:32 Life on Planet Earth

7. 09:45 Squigglasonica

8. 11:29 Visitor

 

 

 

What we’re dealing with here is the ultimate electro-acid-psy-ambient-dub album!! I’m not a huge fan of labelling musical styles, but that’s what I’d call it. There’s really much going on for it being a chill-out album and that makes it very unique IMO. The album is filled with a lot of warped acid melodies, which add a really tripped-out feel to an overall positive and uplifting sound. It’s sort of like “maximal” psy-chillout. There’s also a nice variation in the rhythmic aspect, which ranges from slow-paced heavy dub rhythms to shuffling breakbeats.

 

My favourite track on this must be Ionospheric State. It’s simply a marvellous trip with its spaced-out ambience, the distorted melodic acid lines I mentioned above and an overall sort of feel-good vibe to it. Furthermore, I read somewhere that Children of the Bong were also influenced by the Aphex Twin, and indeed the rhythm sections of Ionospheric State and Squigglasonica remind me of Aphex a lot, I think that’s really cool.

 

The feeling of Ionospheric State is perfectly carried on with the beginning of the next track, Interface Reality. That ambient intro always puts a smile on my face. But later on, the acid melodies become really freaked-out and demented, it’s sort of a contrast to the positive ambience surrounding. I found this a bit disturbing at first but meanwhile I really appreciate it.

 

With Underwater Dub we have a really chilled and smokey dub tune. It’s amazing how they created that original dub feeling in this track, and how well it works with their own specific sound/style.

 

And then there is the excellent Life on Planet Earth, another rather dubby track but more reminiscent of Banco de Gaia. And what an emotional piece of music it is! A tune that almost makes you break out into tears because of its euphoric energy. Really, really beautiful track.

 

Every track on this album is brilliant IMO, even if I didn’t mention all of them.

 

favourites: 2(!), 3, 5, 6(!)

 

This is an album I’d recommend to everyone who likes psy music, even those who are not that much into ambient. You can’t go wrong with this. It’s a masterpiece. :)

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They released an album ? ? ? ?

How come I never heard about this album ?

Huh, I can't believe it. I didn't even see it anywhere mentioned or reviewed and I am here, on Psychedelic Mind Expander non stop...

PLus it is ambient ! Hah ! Where do you dig all this stuff Astro Cortex ? Thanks...I'll check them out...;)

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Guest Astro Cortex

That's the outcome of extensively browsing the web for interesting stuff, my friend :)

 

It takes quite a bit of time, you have to look in the right places. But it's as simple as this: Just google some artist or label names or whatever you'd like to find more information about. It may be an artist you are pretty familiar with but you want to find out about the artist's discography or, respectively, about the label, and that way you discover other related artists and labels that might be interesting to you. There's a huge lot of stuff out there, but it's all connected. For me, each new discovery is a logical next step from something else I've discovered before. And I must say I've never been disappointed by any release I purchased in the last few years. Strangely enough there are a lot of albums which, before I could get hold of them, I hadn't found much more information about than the release year and the tracklist but I thought "wow, this must be a great album, I have to find it somewhere!". Sooner or later it popped up on eBay or Amazon, I grabbed it right away, and indeed it turned out to be a real materpiece for me. As was exactly the case with the Children of the Bong album :D

 

Today I must say I'm a bit more into the ambient/IDM side of things than into psytrance but I think this was a logical progression from my initial discovery of psytrance. However I still love psytrance, and since I started with psytrance, I post my reviews here in the psy forum. I feel sort of "at home" here :)

 

ps: most of my google searching ended in Discogs and Wolf's Kompaktkiste. These two websites helped me the most with discovering all that great music, I believe. The latter only has covers and tracklists but as I said, sometimes I don't need much more to find out what I'm looking for ;)

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Guest Astro Cortex

you have to look in the right places.

ROFL

 

I just noticed how funny this sentence looks next to my avatar :lol:

 

But you won't find good music in there..... :lol:

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Astro Cortex...gotta agree with ya here!

This cd is one the bests I've heard! :)

And Seraph you really haven't heard this before?? :o

It's really worth checking out, amazing piece!

Btw...I had the cover of this CD as my avatar a while ago... :)

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Well, oopium, I can't know about every single album out there, even though I am doing my best in collecting and knowing as much as possible. I had no idea they had ambient music before. This album will surely get my attention in near future...;)

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Wicked Album.

 

Apparently, Children of the Bong are/were (?) friends of Eat Static, who kindly let them use their studio for the production of this album.

 

It really is a good one people. I remember first getting this back in 95'.

 

Wicked trancey breakbeat fuelled psychedelia.

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Guest Astro Cortex

Just to get it right, it was Banco de Gaia they borrowed the equipment from.

 

In the CD booklet it says "recorded deep in the black mountains Wales", and in their thanks list they mentioned "Toby de Gaia for lending us the equipment".

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Guest Astro Cortex

I had no idea they had ambient music before.

Seraph, I wonder what else you've heard by them before. Anything that's not ambient? I have the suspicion you're confusing them with Children of the Doc, who had, to even more confusion, a track called Bionic Bong ;)

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Just to get it right, it was Banco de Gaia they borrowed the equipment from.

 

In the CD booklet it says "recorded deep in the black mountains Wales", and in their thanks list they mentioned "Toby de Gaia for lending us the equipment".

222288[/snapback]

 

he eh !!

 

Nice one Astro - I knew they used someone's else's equipment, I could have sworn it was Eat Static's. Oh well, evidently my memory is not what it used to be ..... :rolleyes:

 

Perhaps this explains why it was their only ever album as Children of the Bong .... shame ......

 

:)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Children of the Bong, Eat Static and Banco De Gaia were all lable mates at one point on Planet Dog records and I know they used to perform together and Planet Dog gigs back in the mid 90s'.

I saw all three perform in New York back in like 1994 or something at the LimeLight during CMJ - I hardly remember it, but it was cool.

 

Anyhow, Sirius Sounds is a killer album and quite unique. There really is nothing else like it. Still stands the test of time if you ask me.

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  • 4 weeks later...

It is/was good for its time and it did represent something different back then like most Planet dog releases-all this music was the precusor to psy trance in my opinion but when I do listen to it now its a little too slow for my liking but neverthess a worthwhile cd to have. i liked another group from that era-optic eye, whatever happened to them ??

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  • 6 months later...
  • 5 months later...

I always liked this album, though it was copied from a friend

a few weeks ago I got the original disc

and a present from Dr. Hofman s 100th birthday

and after these many years

It both stands to test of time and electric test of the kool aid

what an album to listen while tripping

good good music

one of my all time faves and definetly a classic

recommended a million times

original, psychedelic stuff

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Most of the songs are deep heavy dubby stuff, and pretty psychedelic indeed! Haven't they released other albums under Children of the Bong? It's also a pretty damn good name for a group, I must add :)

I've bought this only recently, maybe in 2004, and like many ambient-albums (fsol, orb anyone?) from around that time, they almost don't sound dated at all. Excellent stuff, to say the least! I think my favourites are 4, 5 and 6, but that's if I recall correctly. The more dubby songs, that is! :)

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  • 2 months later...

allow me to join this discussion :)

 

what i really wanted to ask is, can any of you recommend me something as good and as unique ? i find sirius sounds to be topnotch piece of art and hope that at least few of you would agree with me. my research concluded that there's nothing 'similar' out there, thus am looking for anything of 'same quality' instead. please help me out :)

 

best regards,

-spathi

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Guest Astro Cortex

*ponders*

 

...

 

...

 

sorry, can't think of anything right now that's more similar to this than other similar stuff, if you know what I mean ;) . It's quite a unique album, but you may wanna check out other ambient/dub albums, such as Timeshard - Crystal Oscillations.

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  • 2 years later...

Man I really wish these guys put out more music. This album is fast becoming one of my favorite albums of all-time.

 

It has a lot of elements to it that I love to hear in music and get's me really psyched up on it.

 

Favorite tracks are: Ionospheric State, Squigglasonica, well... pretty much everything on the album, it's that good.

 

 

What a gem this album is. And from 1995 too, which makes it crazy.

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Its unbelievable to me that such fantastic tripped out stuff was made 14 years ago. Truly a unique band with a unique sound which is almost impossible to find today. This is probably the best acidic psyambient along ive heard along with CBL - Hydroponik Garden. If anyone has anything to recommend which even remotely sounds like COTB please let us know. :)

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  • 1 month later...

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