![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/all_india_radio.jpg\")
From the outset, All India Radio is all over the map. The name suggests a group from the Indian subcontinent, and the music draws clear inspiration from British late-period psychedelic\/space rock (most notably Pink Floyd) and late-late-period American psych revival (specifically Flaming Lips). After all that, All India Radio is actually an ambient\/chillwave group from Melbourne, Austrailia.<\/p>\n
The tunes on Space<\/i> (the group\u2019s fourth full-length release) float by, as one would expect. There\u2019s a strong melodic element to songs like \u201cVega,\u201d though, one that would be out of place among most trance-focused artists. The keyboard textures are familiar ones: Hammond organs, Mellotrons, gurgling \u201870s-era analog synths (or at least their modern-day digital counterparts) abound. A more \u201880s feel \u2013 via creamy synth pads \u2013 crops up here and there as well. And the moaning, keening sound of steel guitars is a prominent feature, evoking thoughts of both David Gilmour and Yes\u2019 Steve Howe.<\/p>\n
Most of Space<\/i> is instrumental, and when vocals do appear, they\u2019re by singer\/songwriter Leona Gray; her sultry down-tempo vibe compares favorably with the early releases from Zero 7, and Gray\u2019s impressive range finds her effortlessly reaching for the upper register. \u201cHolding\u201d features some wonderfully soaring lead vocals from Gray, with the instrumentalists laying down a wonderfully glacial backdrop a la At War with the Mystics<\/i>.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeirs of Ineptune\u201d features a throbbing synth line that recalls the Alan Parsons Project’s I Robot<\/i> LP, with heavily reverberated spaghetti-western guitar (and some Animals<\/i>-era styled electric piano) added for good effect. Fellow dream-pop auteur Steve Kilbey (of the Church) lends his moody spoken-word talents to \u201cEuridyce in Scarlet,\u201d the album\u2019s most dance-oriented track. With its appealing guitar work, the melancholy \u201cTheo\u2019s Sunlight Dream\u201d is perhaps the most finely textured of the tracks on Space<\/i>, but all eight cuts have their charms. The drum machine vibe of \u201cSonda IV\u201d closes the album on a slightly more futuristic (or perhaps retro-futuristic) note, calling to mind the work of Jean-Michel Jarre.<\/p>\n
A fun fact \u2013 mentioned in the press kit accompanying the album \u2013 is that the cover art, \u201cEclipse,\u201d was allegedly commissioned by Pink Floyd to serve as the cover art for one of their albums. It went unused; the band came up with a different title for their new work, and put an image of a prism on the cover instead. True anecdote or not, 45 years later, Hardy\u2019s work fits the music on Space<\/i> perfectly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the outset, All India Radio is all over the map. The name suggests a group from the Indian subcontinent, and the music draws clear inspiration from British late-period psychedelic\/space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,26,49,56,57,65],"tags":[3551],"class_list":["post-15141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ambient","category-electronica","category-new-release","category-prog","category-psych","category-review","tag-all-india-radio","cat-5-id","cat-26-id","cat-49-id","cat-56-id","cat-57-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15143,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15141\/revisions\/15143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}