Blake's New Jerusalem

Album review

Tim Blake played synths with Gong, Hawkwind, Steve Hillage, and other similar projects before going solo as a synthesizer performer and recorder. This was Blake's first studio release versus his recordings of live gigs. He really polishes things up a great deal, adding guitars and singing in the style of Gong's Daevid Allen and Steve Hillage's solo offerings. Blake's vocals would never be his strong point. His blessing to the ears was and always will be his ethereal and spacy synthesizer expertise. As Gong and Steve Hillage all preached the New Age and tuning into earth vibes and aligning one's soul with Earth energies to bring in a world of light and love -- so Blake also crooned. No doubt, the '70s drug culture and disenchantment with organized religion had an immense influence on philosophy and music. So when you mix it all together into altered states of consciousness, you get such evangelistically naïve but sincere musical expressions such as this release. Laying aside all criticisms of the lyrics and the "message" being given here, one will find dreamy, tripped-out synth work that stands as some of the very best of its era. Blake's 16:11 side-long odyssey "Blake's New Jerusalem" is worth hearing over and over again, as it is an assured head-trip needing no chemically altered states. This piece alone is as good, if not better, than any of the sequenced synthesizer work of Jean Michel Jarre or Tangerine Dream. Blake's embellishments and melody-line improv solos provide matchless beauty. In other words -- this song is other-dimensional, universally metaphysical, and deeply moving for those of any faith in some great beyond.
© John W. Patterson /TiVo