Big Men Cry

Banco De Gaia includes: Toby Marks (various instruments).
Additional personnel: Matt Jenkins (soprano saxophone); Dick Parry (alto, tenor & baritone saxophones); Aidan O'Brien (Uillean pipes).
Recording information: Gighouse, Leamington; Holly Farm, Honiley; World Bank.
More wide-world electron big beat from Toby Marks, who knows a good groove when he creates one. This 1997 entry in the Banco canon is content to forget anything that came to pass within electronica in the defining period of the mid-'90s. Marks simply fires up the drum machines, engages his samples, and lets the bullets fly. Variety lingers here, however, in welcome fashion.
"Celestine" backs the BPM down in favor of a slow motion, progish/fusion saunter replete with philistine horns and synths limned from the stone edifices of cathedrals. On "One Billion Miles Out," Marks deposits the world-weary traveler in a Banco de Galactica and blasts him out into the asteroid belt, where spooky, star-shine electronics percolate then hiss-the voices of angels arising to greet their visitor. Then it's back to "Starstation Earth" to relax to space-age bachelor-pad music made with bromide synths left over from Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, as you lay awash in twinkling ambience. And you can take that to the Banco.