Chris Bocast: Press

RADIO STATIONS PLAYING MUSIC FROM 'THROUGH THE AIRLOCK':

XM Satellite Radio Ch. 77 Audiovisions - regular rotation
KSER - Everett WA "Starlit Skies"
KCUR - Kansas City 'Night Tides' - Best of 2004
WWSP - Stevens Pt WI 'Ambient Ether' Top 20
WXPN - Philadelphia 'Star's End'
WXPH - Harrisburg 'Star's End'
WKHS - Baltimore 'Star's End'
- Top 20 - Significant Release
KKUP - Cupertino CA 'Mystic Music' Top 20
WSKG - New York 'Soundscapes'
WDBX - Carbondale IL ' Beyond the Lakes' Top 20
WDIY - Allentown PA 'Galactic Travels'
KAOS - Evergreen State College WA 'Super Secret Lodge Show'
WXDU - Duke University NC 'Music XDU'
WTUL - Tulane University LA
WVKR - 'Secret Music', Vassar College, NY
WXXI - Rochester, NY
KZYX & Z - 'Iridium Music' Mendocino, CA
WFIT - 'Future Echoes' - Florida
Ultima Thule - Australia
"Vertical Solitude" Radio Network Dynamite 101.2 FM., Moscow Russia.


also thanks to stations in Hawaii, Sacramento, and everywhere else that I don't have the call letters for.

Internet Radio:
Pandora.com (which is awesome!)
Rhapsody
Nautic Radio Groningen The Netherlands 'License to Chill'
UMFM - Toronto, Canada 'Sea@Night'
Live365.com
AOLonline
Audiosyncracy
"Back to the Universe"
Radiotochka, Russia

CHRIS BOCAST
Through The Airlock
Divergent Arts (2005)

Here’s an unusual yet appealing and accessible take on spacemusic from Chris Bocast. The CD is never overtly abstract or especially dark (although it flirts with dark ambient at times, much like Hammock’s music does on Kenotic). Bocast also, for the most part, avoids sounding similar to “classics” from artists like Jonn Serrie, Geodesium, or Kevin Braheny. Bocast is in the same category as Pete Kelly, a.k.a. Igneous Flame. Both craft shorter (three to five minute) “spacescapes” which evoke the deeper darker edges of the cosmos or stark unforgiving alien environments. Both artists also feature prominent use of electric guitar, frequently unrecognizable as such. On this album, Bocast also plays piano, ebow, and moog. His use of heavily-echoed piano on the nine-minute “EVA” brings an original elegance to spacemusic. Notes hang suspended and reverberate forever painting a somber yet beautiful mood. On the other hand, the piano on “Return of the Far Fleet” is used in dramatic powerful fashion, playing almost in an anthem-like fashion, matched by what I think is an undercurrent of moog and perhaps ebow. The song paints an appropriately heroic ode to conquering heroes, or so I assume it’s meant to with the title being what it is.

Most of Through the Airlock is haunting, mysterious, and would serve as perfect laying-in-the-dark music for taking imaginary voyages out beyond the Crab Nebula. The short track “Intake” opens the album with a series of electronic tonalities that shift and pan. All the album’s tracks segue directly into one another with no pauses and this one leads into the drifting sustained guitar peals and drones of “Numinous,” blending warmth with shadow the same way that Kelly does on Oxana. With a title like “Ice Cauldron” you’d expect a disturbing and forbidding sonic adventure and you get just that: rumbling drones and subtle buzz-saw guitar and soaring notes (judiciously pushed to the back of the mix so as to not prove too jarring). This cut flows into “Radiant” which is the exact opposite in mood and character, comprised of shimmering synths and gently flowing washes that alternately sparkle and wash over you, bathing you in retro-sounding electronics. “Charred Relic Drifting,” is well-matched to its title, presenting distorted guitar feedback and swirling tones that are as close as the CD gets to deliberately “dark.” I particularly enjoyed “The Dry Lake” which is a minimalist excursion into higher pitched sustained notes/tones that seem to stretch on into infinity, and “Heart’s Rest” with gently pealing guitars layered in such a soothing way that I can see why Bocast gave the song its title. There is also a bonus thirteenth track (almost thirteen minutes long), a long ambient/spacemusic drifting soundscape that slowly evolves through its duration yet sustains a warm mood throughout. It’s a lovely way to close out this ambitious and praiseworthy recording.

Being a sucker for recordings with an outer space or SF inspiration, I was bound to like Through The Airlock (as long as it was halfway decent). I was, however, unprepared for how adventurous, unique, yet accessible and easy to digest this album proved to be (from the first playing, in fact). While I’m somewhat late to the party (both my New Age Reporter colleague RJ Lannan and my friend and fellow reviewer Dene Bebbington of the review site Melliflua www.melliflua.com both praised this CD in earlier reviews) I believe it deserves all the exposure and extolling of its virtues as possible. Chris Bocast brings forth a unique musical vision on Through The Airlock. If you want to hear a special brand of spacemusic that remains grounded in the general aesthetic of the genre but still explores vast new territory, this is the album for you. Solidly recommended.

Bill Binkelman
New Age Reporter

REVIEW FROM MELLIFLUA.COM

Chris Bocast played in new wave and rock bands prior to becoming interested in ambient and experimental music to explore the tonal possibilities of electric guitar. One of the results of this is his first solo album Through the Airlock - a sonic excursion into the depths of space created by electric guitar, ebow, Moog synth, and piano. It comes in a stylish four piece digipak illustrated with scientific diagrams and star maps.

After the slightly quirky short opening track the style settles down into otherworldly and often formless spacemusic with a raw sonic edge. You can tell this is a musician experimenting with the kind of sounds possible from the instruments, but the result is cohesive and satisfying rather than outright weird. Sonically and atmospherically it's a somewhat reminiscent of Mingo's The Once and Future World.

Exemplifying the hypnotic aspect of the album is the piece “Cold Sleep”. Initially fat reverbing drones give way to harsher drones twisting around each other like the resonances from a taut metallic rope. A proto melody is created by notes that flash into the soundscape and fade away like repeated shooting stars.

The most downloaded piece from Chris's website is “EVA”, and with good reason. It's arguably the best track on the album in which echoey piano notes muse in both the foreground and background evoking the sense of wonder and expansiveness of a space walk outside a spacecraft. Toward the end of the album there's drama in the track “Return of the Far Fleet”. Deep and forceful sustained piano notes twinned with organ-esque, kind of melodic, pads can lead one to imagine the anticipation of a space fleet returning from distant adventures.

On first playing Through the Airlock I wasn't much taken by it, but after a couple of more intense listening sessions I've decided that this could be a classic spacemusic album.

Just a Little Past That Final Frontier

(From NewAgeReporter - June 2005 - RJ Lannan)

Take every sci-fi soundtrack you ever heard, roll them into a ball and throw them into a black hole. Now get ready for some real space music. Chris Bocast has created a soundtrack for the mind that makes other stuff pale in comparison even in zero-G. Ambient, with a generous helping of electronic, Bocast’s new album Through the Airlock generates that floating in space feeling from the very first chord.

Bocast’s album takes you on a journey through far space to a strange new planet that draws you in and then reveals its history in exciting, extraordinary music. Within are great discoveries that hold ominous clues to ancient civilizations. Some of them you really don’t want to know about. Chris Bocast is the chief pilot on this journey playing electric guitar, ebow, moog synthesizer and piano. I’m not surprised if there is a theremin in there somewhere. This is one of those seamless albums where the music segues so tightly that it sounds like one continuous track. Nothing wrong with that. Strap in, hold fast…and let the journey begin.

Intake, the first cut is the beginning of the voyage. It is a bouncy energy pulse tune with industrial overtones that bangs around from side to side. It is a sense of absorption more than ingestion. It free falls into the tune Numinous. Numinous is a track about things unexplained, things way beyond our comprehension. It is subtle blue waves that come over you and perhaps begin a transmogrification. We will only know the outcome by the end of the journey.

There is a hole detected on the surface of this planet. It is so deep that measurements are difficult to obtain. It reflects blinding blue-white light and it has glossy sides. It is the Ice Cauldron. As you edge closer you feel the pull. The force is so strong that you may not be able to resist. Low harmonics swirl around you as electric guitar riffs take on a mesmerizing tone. You keep pulling and pulling and finally you fall and find yourself not where you were.

The tune Charred Relic Drifting says they were different from us. Very different indeed. The remains suggest they had different needs to their physical being, but they still needed enclosures; protection from the invisible dangers of space. Bright swells and roaring tones produce an eerie atmosphere that suggests a vastness to our surroundings. It is cold. Oh, so very cold. The frightening part? Their ship was a hundred times the size of our vehicle.

Even as you are in Cold Sleep your mind is still wide awake. Unfortunately, it can not possibly process the incredible amounts of data it has absorbed in the first part of the journey. You drift with the music that has taken up residence in your head. Life has been reduced to half speed and so are your thoughts. You beg to wake up. This was my favorite track on Through the Airlock.

You arrive at an immense clearing on the surface of the rocky planet and you realize that this is The Dry Lake you saw from above. It was obviously made by a guided hand, more so than a natural phenomenon. What purpose did it serve on this craggy plain and what made it dry up? Echoing ambient waves of warm red music reflect off the edges of the horizons and into your psyche. It is that big.

Heart's Rest is one of the lightest tunes on the album and one of the best. With a bit of soothing inorganic voice Bocast creates that drifting quality. The music gives improved strength to your recuperative powers. For some unexplained reason your heart is lighter and your spirit refreshed.

The Upwelling is the final leg of our flight. Like your life passing before your eyes, all the twists and turns and stops and starts of your passage are there in your mind. And somewhere in there is a new beginning and a memory of new found friends. This is a wondrous track to end the album.

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Chris Bocast has five previously released albums. He is the lead guitarist for the band Boondoggle. He lives in an undisclosed location somewhere in Colorado.

Bocast is the quintessential sky pilot as he takes you on an ambient/electronic trip farther out then anyone else has ever ventured. And then brings you back!

Chris Bocast: Through the Airlock. This one is a real find. Very radiant
and expansive spacemusic of the most vintage kind. Some wonderful themes
and sounds.