If Reagan Played Disco

Pete Namlook & Klaus Schulze
Ambient World (Germany)



Not only is this my first listen to any of this long running series, but I also got it just days prior to hearing about Robert Moog falling ill due to a brain tumor. His passing compelled me to give it a listen again, and his spoken introduction makes me both sad and yet also introspective at the music revolution he launched as is apparent from this album. As a friend told me that this sounds like a long lost Jean-Michel Jarre album, and I'd have to agree. It's very deliberately old-school-save for the occasional not-too-ancient sounding drum machine
- and happily so. One could imagine futuristic (by late seventies reckoning) spaceships careening around the room, Carl Sagan in his dandelion-seed spaceship or recall a lysergic memory or two from the pre-Reagan era. Namlook and Schulze lay down big fat Moog lines in a giant, cosmic reverb-y void. All the song titles reference a Pink Floyd song, albeit in a cheeky, rearranged manner (Phantom Heart Brother, Careful With That AKS Peter, etc.) but it's not very Floydian. Folks who stopped listening to music after Tomita, Vangelis Tangerine Dream peaked can have a reason to rejoice and lament no more that the future ain't what it used to be. I've been listening to it for weeks and I'm still not sick of it.