Space for the Earth is Ozric Tentacles’ 21st studio album since coming together at the 1983 Stonehenge Free Festival and their first since 2015’s Technicians of the Sacred. However, while the band still revolves around multi-instrumentalist Ed Wynne, with assistance from Silas Neptune’s synths and Balazs Szende’s percussion, this album also sees a wealth of appearances from a number of former band members like drummers Nick Van Gelder and Paul Hankin, flautist Champigon and ex-Eat Static synth man Joie Hinton. Similarly, these tunes could just as easily have been recorded during the band’s purple patch, when albums like Jurassic Shift and Arborescence reached more than respectable positions in the UK charts.
Ambient but trancey grooves dominate Space for the Earth throughout. From the uplifting “Stripey Clouds” to the bubbling psychedelia of “Blooperdome” and “Humboldt Currant” with its loops and samples of non-western world music, these instrumental grooves lay out their stall as the music of choice for “head shops” around the country for the foreseeable future. Indeed, “Popscape” has something of a techno feel about it with proggy flavours and a jazzy wash, while the title track lays down System 7-type trippiness with Champigon’s flute floating around it. It really is like stepping back to the last time that hippies got anywhere close to the cultural zeitgeist.
Ozric Tentacles still inhabit that part of the sonic landscape where Gong rub shoulders with Jean-Michel Jarre. A place that is forever part of the early 1990s Club Dog/crustie raver scene, where trippy psychedelic dance music and ambient space rock grooves were enhanced by the pungent aroma of the strongest weed and plenty of other brain-shakers. Thirty years ago, it was a fun place to visit, but Space for the Earth sounds more like spaced-out background nostalgia than an engine for bacchanal excess.
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