It is always a pleasure getting new material from Phil Klampe, who is Homogenized Terrestrials, and when the package arrived in an LP-size box, I knew then and there it was going to the head of the cue in the waiting for review bin. This is the first of three releases that arrived together, the only LP in the lot, and the first Homogenized Terrestrials album I ever received on vinyl. Visually the packaging is quite in line with Klampe's style of art- gorgeously and bizarrely minimal, with even more minimal text. On Bandcamp Klampe describes the album simply as "a trip into the realm of the intangible," and while it is that, there's more to be added descriptively.

The album is two lengthy tracks - the A-side- "Powers" at 19:47, and the B-side- "Principalities" at 17:47. I have listened to this both on vinyl and digitally, and I can tell you the experience is quite different. While on vinyl you may miss some of the sonic incidents that stand out in the digital version, the analog vinyl gives the impression of a closed environment, perhaps interstellar travel on a FTL ship where every nuance of the ship, the journey, the interior and exterior environments are explored and exploited. The environments are consistent throughout, yet with sonic incidents representative of phases of the sojourn. I say Faster-Than-Light because sub-light might potentially be too noisy. Not that this doesn't have elements of noise( it certainly does) but that noise is quite sophisticated and alludes to the possibilities of "other events" along the way. I imagine that bending or folding space in order to achieve FTL travel is not a silent operation, and while none of us are likely to know in this lifetime the sounds of a warp engine, it's fun to imagine something more interesting than abject silence. If the laws of physics do not work the same way in subspace or hyperspace, who's to say what really happens sonically in those dimensions. You could be traveling through any number of quantum fields to reach your destination, and each of those may produce its own unique environment. That's what the imagination considers here, but wrapped in an envelope of momentum, which Homogenized Terrestrials achieves easily throughout both sides. Of course, "Powers" and "Principalities" are both different in subtle and obvious ways. While not giving much away, I can tell you that the last few minutes of "Principalities" hints at the music of the cosmos.

I find this release particularly interesting at this point in time sinvce I have just begun reading science fiction author Iain M. Banks' 'Culture Series' books after getting hooked on a YouTube explanation of it with stunning still visuals and spoken word description. I strongly recommend the record version because there are very few releases these day like this on vinyl and it does sound different than the digital. Absolutely worthy!