Gamma & Gorn

Here’s a pair of Fax discs from Massimo Vivona, Italian trance maestro, credited to Gamma and Gorn. They’re both in what you might call an “ambient trance” style – kinetic but gentle electronic burblings, great to work to perhaps but not aimed at the dancefloor. Vivona also released Fax discs under his own name and as Xenon, and has since produced a swathe of similarly trancey tracks for Italian labels like Headzone and Liquid Audio Sounds.

Gorn [Massimo Vivona & Bella Cox], CD, Fax, 1993

01. Giovenes (7:00)
02. Delargo 1 (9:26)
03. Trancesub (7:01)
04. Sub (4:31)
05. Move the Face (7:27)
06. Sea of Love (6:01)
07. A Lucinazion (5:44)
08. Acult (20:02)

Link | Discogs

Gamma [Massimo Vivona & Dr Atmo], CD, Fax, 1993

01. Attuale (10:35)
02. Katanga (20:04)
03. Spirituale (21:26)
04. Speltrum (10:27)
05. Intelletuale (13:15)

Link | Discogs

Various – Palace of Lights EP

7″ EP, Palace of Lights, 1981

Kerry Leimer’s Seattle-based Palace of Lights label started in the early 1980s and quickly developed, in a small, way into a little hothouse of Eno-inspired fuzzy ambience, Fourth World workouts and generally pleasing music full stop. Along with Leimer, whose music formed the bulk of PoL’s releases, there were friends Marc Barreca and Michael William Gilbert; Leimer and Barreca were also in Savant.

After a long hiatus, Leimer and his wife restarted the label a few years back. As well as reissuing some classic Leimer/Savant work has more recently been home to splendid electronic and neo-classical work from the likes of Steve Peters (who played with Leimer very early on) and Gregory Taylor. If you want to start anywhere, we recommend you try Leimer’s Closed System Potentials or Imposed Order.

Here’s a sampler EP from their earliest days. It was limited to 350 copies. The Barreca tracks are from his album Twilight; the others did not appear in these forms anywhere else.

A1. Savant – The Radio
A2. K Leimer – Assemble & Diffuse
B1. Marc Barreca – School for Whales
B2. Marc Barreca – The Wendigo
B3. Anode – Whiteout

Link: see comments | Discogs | Palace of Lights

Thomas P Heckmann

Couple of discs now from a master of hard trance – lovely pounding, acid-edged gliders that pulse and surge like racing laser beams. Probably best known as Exit 100 for Force Inc, Heckmann has also – as is usual – released work under dozens of other pseudonyms, including Purple Plejade, Trope, Skydiver and of course the ineffable Parrot Torture (!). Here we have a couple of representative discs, a collection of some of his finest moments on Labworks; and a gentler, almost kitsch record of space themes apparently inspired by the black and white German Buck Rogers-esque TV show of 1966, Raumpatrouille Orion.

Thomas P Heckmann – Spectral Emotions (The Labworks Years), CD, Death Becomes Me, 1995

01. Art Mechanique (6:31)
02. Chiswick Days (6:04)
03. Closer (5:11)
04. Spectral Emotion (6:35)
05. Kaleidescope (4:36)
06. Splash (4:52)
07. Science (8:45)
08. Pinhead (6:27)
09. Confusion (5:39)
10. Moonchild (6:13)
11. Wavescape (5:40)
12. Chiswick Days (Bluey Bros remix) (6:23)

Link | Discogs

Age – The Orion Years, CD, Mille Plateaux, 1994

01. Lichtspruch (13:16)
02. Lagrange Point L5 (6:14)
03. Imaginary Friend (7:46)
04. Parallelwelt (10:08)
05. Transmitter – Love (5:55)
06. Lancet (8:43)
07. Eine Fremde Lebensform (5:50)
08. Big E (6:55)
09. Zeitsprung (7:45)

Link | Discogs