Spirals in Hyperspace

Released in 2004

Spirals in Hyperspace is the tenth studio album by Ozric Tentacles. It was released in 2004 on Magna Carta Records.

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About Spirals in Hyperspace

Ozric’s music is hard to categorize, but things don’t get much easier for the band. “I can’t do that really. People put all these words together to try and describe it, that’s the weird thing. They might title it ethnic, psychedelic, space reggae, ambient, rocky, blah, blah, blah, you know. Who knows? Music of the mind, armchair journey music or whatever. It is escapist in a way. We do it for the pleasure of losing ourselves in a piece of music. That’s what we try and do really.”

Often equally confusing are the song titles which, along with the album names, are hardly conventional. “We’ve got no lyrics, so they’re free to be called whatever they like,” Ed explains. “It’s a bit of a last minute panic actually naming them, because doing a piece of music the way we do it’s not like, Here’s the music, it goes like this, put some lyrics on, there you go it’s finished. It’s a journey of discovery, a two week very wide musical journey to put things together. So what could you call that. It’s like going on a journey and having to think of a title for that. Usually we go for the mad option calling it something weird, partly so people have no preconceptions of what it is going to be and they can start from point one with no preconceived ideas, which is partly the confusion of the titles. That is the main idea.”

Is this the same approach when writing songs? “Well a lot of it is actually to do with buying a new bit of equipment and hearing what it does, and going, Wow, imagine that going into that. I mean the writing is very organic with us. Things suggest themselves, almost as if the track is writing itself. We’re just the people that are putting it on there. It’s like the bit of music is telling us what to play. It all sounds very mystical, but it’s just suggestion really.”

Ed has a very distinctive playing style that is peppered with weird and wonderful scales. “Unfortunately I don’t read music and I don’t have any musical theory, so I couldn’t name them. They’re probably hybrids. There are about 10 different eastern sounding scales that I use, depending on what type of rhythm is behind it. I don’t know what they are called, but they are very ethnic sounding. I do like the eastern scales. A lot of what I listen to is very, very raw ethnic music. People out in the middle of nowhere staying on a campsite clonking bits of wood together and playing home made violins and stuff. I’d much prefer to listen to that than anything in the Top 10 singles chart.”

Credits

Ed Wynne – guitar, keyboards, mind colours, & programming on all tracks
Stuart “Schoo” Fisher – drums on Chewier, Oakum, & Zoemetra
Seaweed – synths & bubbles on Oakum & kindling on Chewier
John Egan – ney, blul, duduk & silver flute on Oakum & Zoemetra
Zia Geelani – bass on Oakum
Merv Pepler (Eat Static) – drum programming & samps’n’stuff on Psychic Chasm
Brandi Wynne – glide bass on Chewier, spikes on Plasmoid & tea on Psychic Chasm
Steve Hillage & Miquette Giraudy (Gong, System 7) – guitar & additional synths on Akasha