Album Notes

The sole mission of this music is to let the imagination play with what might be 'out there'. To possibly experience as personal our connection with the seemingly impersonal vastness of space. There are those among us who profess to know exactly why we are here, who or what created us and what exactly we are meant to do. For many of us though, it is a mystery. It may strike us when taking time out in nature, looking at the night sky, the lightning of a storm or it may hit us in a flash on the subway or freeway one day. Hit us that it is a mystery of the deepest kind. We are connected to a planet and atmosphere and yet we've striven for centuries to know whats out there. We've devised space suits to walk on the moon or repair a space station. We know we are the stuff of the stars. Our star, the sun, sustains us. Other stars might also. Chances are very good that the stuff of the universe is in us and we in it. Maybe this music is not imagination at all, but simply folk music about our home, the way Appalachian songwriters wrote about the hills of Tennessee or the Hawaiians about the swaying palms. What we don't know scientifically, intellectually, we feel in our hearts. Hard headed, grounded military men go into space and get all emotional when looking back at their home, now seen as a blue and white globe. Knowing facts about it's oceans and geography pales beside the waves of what can only be called love when seeing it as a whole and glimpsing it's part in a much, much greater whole. I have in my studio now, instruments with thousands of sounds, each of which can be changed subtly or radically with the touch of a pad, or knob, or slider and changed again through recording techniques and modules through which the sound is taken. I've felt many times in the past decade in particular, that the new musical instruments are a manifestation of musicians desires and technicians response to those 'dreams'. There's the obvious written and spoken feedback that musicians give to the creators of the instruments and the unspoken call that's "in the ethers". The only "pure" instrument is the voice and maybe a stick hitting a hollow log. From that point on it was creation from imagination to bring into reality that which was not, to communicate that which is, to point to that which may be and maybe is, but not seen, heard or felt. Why music to do this? Why not? Review by Dene Bebbington from Melliflua.com: Alexander is an artist I know little about, but his website shows that he's released several albums. Tour of the Galaxies is a marvellous electronic music journey to the outer reaches of space and home again. The liner notes provide a narrative for the journey with a one or two sentence description of a point in the story, or feeling that could be evoked, on each track. Some of these vignettes are structured around rhythm and melody but several are in the vein of flowing ambient spacemusic. It's straight into a majestic intro with “Beyond Our Stars”. Sustained synth chords and washes swish across the soundscape like bursts of cosmic rays tempting the urge to explore. The rise and fall of all the elements and the chord progressions stirs a feeling of awe. Indeed, Alexander is skilled at using music to evoke impressions or feelings. I found “Racing With a Comet” to be one of the weakest tracks musically but the stuttering rhythm, shimmering sonic waves passing over, and background spacey effects do paint a scene of flying near a comet as its icy surface blasts off forming a bright tail. Demonstrating that little more than deep resonant chords are needed to create an atmosphere is “The Very Deep Canyons of Another Planet”. In this cinematic piece lush synth chords convey varying emotions from trepidation to amazement. In contrast “The Dream of Space” shifts the mood to become more relaxed and, well, dreamy. Gentle cosmic washes and whistles lead into a percussive section where a different aspect of the percus