PYE CORNER AUDIO

Master of haunted electronica journeys to the centre of your mind.

Prog has traditionally been afraid to dance, but it needn’t be that way. Ever since the first big techno wave hit in the early 90s, artists such as The Orb, Future Sound Of London and Underworld have been just as interested in feeding the head as moving feet. Pye Corner Audio is the latest in a long line of electronic psychonauts intent on using their music to deep dive into the backbrain, with Hollow Earth presented as a subterranean concept album, a hypnotic descent into the planet’s id. The PCA sound sits squarely in the haunted dancehall of the Ghost Box universe, full of gorgeous pulsating arpeggios and abstract tonal intrusions, memory-triggering and impressionistic. The title track is a shimmer of heavenly chords and rumbling bass stabs, its hypnotic melody like a flame fluttering in the darkness. Mindshaft revives the ghost of hard trance, but swathed in Tangsstyle Teutonic grandeur. Dancing Shadows features an alien choir of synths and some great Rick Wright-esque arabesques, while Buried Memories locates the disco, only it’s 10 miles underground in a quartz-lined cavern. This is cinematic progtronica, a perfect ‘sense of wonder’ soundtrack.