'Milestones' is the seventh album by electronic musician Hollan Holmes but his first on the Spotted Peccary label. Highly influenced by the Berlin school of electronic music (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schuleze, Manuel Gottsching, et.), Holmes offers 10 sequencer-driven tracks in 65 minutes to take you to the stratosphere, and beyond. Starting out with "Transmitter," Holmes kicks it off perfectly jumping right into the rhythmic pulse without any lengthy ambient preludes. With the title "One Giant Leap" you pretty much know what you're in for. I think the Nasa mission control/astronaut chatter has been done to death, but maybe some people still want to feel like they're riding a rocket and standing on the moon. (Good luck Lothar.) On "The Truth Laid Bare" Hollan adds a bit of playfulness to his space music in smooth swathes of melody. Melodically, there was something a little too New Agey about "Slipstream" for me; too much synth blending, and a nebulous, sweetly blissful ambience that struck me as incongrous. Maybe you have to be from Texas to grok "Texas Backroads," as I didn't see what the title had to do with the music at all. It sounded more like an interim piece anyway, but a rather lengthy one at 7:06. "Bulletproof" reminded me of older Delerium, before they got involved with vocalists. A nice nostalgic piece of electronica. At first I wasn't sure but with repeated listenings of "Inner Sanctum" I realize what was irking me about this track; it's just too jam-packed with sonic effluvia. Another oddly titled track is "The Phone Call." In the abstract there are tones here that could be referential to digital phones, and celestial voices that could be ghosts inhabiting the lines, but it is a kind of mysterious piece. "Something Wicked This Way Comes" stretches out the ambience for a good long time before any sequencers are employed. It's markedly different from other tracks on the album and a welcome change-up. It all ends in a mellow mood with "Ayyappan," which was a little too New Agey for me. Still, most of the album is pretty darn good, and especially engaging if you're into Berlin School. Not what I'd call particularly innovative, but enjoyable nevertheless.