The fertile mind of guitarist and composer Stephan Thelen cast many spells: Sonar’s tritone-tuned minimalist prog rock, the Fractal Sextet’s thickly arranged cosmic space jams, amber string quartet music performed by the likes of the Kronos Quartet. For his latest solo album Worlds in Collision, he circles a new track.
Alongside a cohort drawn from the impressive roster of his little black book, including guitarists David Torn and Jon Durant, drummer Yogev Gabay, and keyboardist/electronics guru Fabio Anile, Thelen layers his effects-soaked guitars over grooves drawn from funk, Arabic music, African music, and dimensions as yet undiscovered. But the most distinctive new facet is the library of spoken word samples provided by Anile. Inspired by the classic Brian Eno and David Byrne album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (as Thelen explains in the liner notes), the simmering “Kosmonaut,” the shimmering “Bullet Train,” and the bristling “Atomic” (also available in a bonus remix by the great Bill Laswell) flow like the lava of a volcano haunted by the spirits of Porcupine Tree, Ozric Tentacles, and DJ Shadow.
Never content with creative complacency, Thelen takes common elements from his prior work and gives them sparkling new shades by painting with a fresh set of colors. As with all of Thelen’s work, Worlds in Collision (quite) makes an immediately sensual impression, then reveals more of its secrets every time it spins.
