Orbit Service

"Songs of Eta Carinae" CD

Beta-lactam Ring Records

Genre: space rock, psych, experimental rock

BlR Records
PO Box 6715
Portland OR 97228

June 2006

Around in varying forms since 1998, Orbit Service is one of Beta-lactam Ring's most recent acquisitions. These folks, who've gone on tour with Edward Ka-Spel and The Legendary Pink Dots, play a sort of spacey, vaguely psychedelic rock music that's often very drawn out and expansive. Sometimes this calls for dreamy, heavily atmospheric soundscapes ("Phase Cancel", "Closed Circuit"); however, most of the other songs feature singer Randall Frazier's haunting, half-spoken vocals over plodding but serious beats and trancey melodies. In the case of "Asphyxia," the album's eleven minute epic, we get an acid-drenched, slow groove and some mesmerizing synths reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder's Midnight Express score - wonderful. On numerous Frazier's louder vocals can seem less than tuneful and a tad unleveled with the background instrumentation, but for the most part Orbit Service stays cool. In fact, the mood and general melodic nature of most of these songs make for a seriously rewarding listen, either fucked up on drugs or not.

MP3s (from orbitservice.com): Wolves, A Hallucination

86%

Matt Shimmer

[Vitals: 11 tracks, 56:10 duration, distributed by the label, released May 9 2006]