S-Range Space Spiral Trax (Sweden)

I really like Spiral Trax; and have hardly listened to anything else over the last week or so. S-Range was right at the top of the progressive heap for muh of last year thanks to some pretty big tunes like Out Of Range and Microchip 23, stuff I couldn’t get enough of. And though these tunes aren’t inluded on Space (a pleasant suprise) the album as a whole sounds really nicely accomplished. Melodies rush everywhere, the pads are smooth as you like, and the synthlines are immaculately poduced, and nicely manipulated. One very dodgy tune though – Test Tones with its vey uncomfortable-making Close Encounters samples – but hey skip past that and enjoy one of the finest spacey-progressive albums in a long while. And with a jolly nice cover.