Just about thirty years ago, Berlin duo Sun Electric (Tom Thiel and Max Loderbauer) released 30.7.94 Live, an album recorded at an outdoor festival in Copenhagen. Amidst a flurry of notable post-Eno, rave-midwifed ambient and ambient-adjacent electronica – Biosphere’s Substrata, Global Communication’s 76:14, Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II, Lifeforms by Future Sound of London, Orbus Terrarum by The Orb – it was greeted with widespread acclaim that still holds.
Three decades on and a long and lovely sister disc emerges from the vaults, recorded in Vienna in 1996. Live at Votivkirche Wien is a great show, a rhythmic, widescreen, Technicolor affair. The big, bass dubby “Waitati Post” is animated by a kind of tribal joy that spins far out into Tubular Bells-y interstellar travel. A stately processional, a light shower of blips, and the duo ease us into the tropical sway of “Kallisto.” Any dark forebodings induced by the tarot reading of “Bagatto” are scattered by the dewy, name-says-it-all closer, “Aaah!”
Punctuated by audience applause unlike its predecessor (which obtained a “studio” sound by being pressed directly from the DAT masters), it’s fun to join the crowd on a nostalgic trip that still feels crisp and fresh and highly relevant.
Stephen Fruitman
Avant Music News 