Discovery Zone’s latest album is not a classic album so much as an audiovisual spatial concept. Performed live at the Berlin Planetarium, everything here revolves around the idea of experiencing music not only in stereo, but physically. With the help of spatial audio technology, the sound moves dynamically around the audience, arriving from all directions, hovering, circling and pouring down.
How this must feel live can probably only be grasped on site. Yet even the digital version gives a sense of how intense the experience is likely to be. The opener »Big Bang« already functions like the beginning of all life: cosmic sounds hover in the background before more earthly elements, such as a quiet trickle, gradually join them. The album as a whole is concerned with the interplay of nature and technology, with evolution and virtual worlds. Accordingly, the sound images keep shifting between organic, ethereal and futuristic.
This works especially well on »Habitat«. At first, the ambient track sounds idyllic: cowbells ringing in the distance, birdsong, a crackling campfire. But in the final third, the mood abruptly tips: a dull urban roar spreads out, accompanied by clattering dishes, monotonous murmuring and traffic noise, until the song finally returns to spherical sounds and leads into »Arp Angels«. The track sounds wholly cosmic, almost sacred through its choral vocals, as though the sky above were opening. Almost in contrast, the album ends peacefully and hopefully in an ambient-prog-house guise – and what remains, really, is the urgent wish to experience this album live in the planetarium.
