Ever since space rockers HENGE arrived on our planet a decade ago, they’ve been delighting listeners with their unique brand of music they call “cosmic dross”. Having made their presence felt with a series of well-received and critically-acclaimed releases, their latest long player, Journey To Voltus B, is a boisterous bundle of sound that’s bursting with bright, dazzling ideas and will fill your head with all sorts of acidic, psychedelic visions and take you to the outer reaches of your psyche.
Despite their claims to be intergalactic travellers from Galaxy 2.0, HENGE actually formed in Manchester (which is a kind of different galaxy) yet they still have an otherworldly charm about them and look (and sound) like extras from a classic episode of Dr Who or Blake’s 7. With HENGE, things tend to veer towards the epic, and while the five songs comprising Side A are all bite size, they’re all connected thematically, which means it’s best consumed in one sitting (like an old school album), so clear a space in your daily planner and prepare to have your mind blown by some truly cranium-exploding sounds. Journey To Voltus B could be described as “progressive” insofar as that the songs contained within are made up of several suites. Despite their alien origins, there’s an organic nature to these tunes, a placidity that renders them extremely malleable. As such, it’s best to sit back and let Side A was over you; the individual tracks bleed into each other as ‘Ascending’ propels us towards the heavens, ‘Slingshot’ shoots us into hyperspace, before we cruise at altitude with ‘Hypersleep’, ‘Descending’ finds us approaching our destination before ‘Welcome To Voltus’ finds us arriving at the mysterious planet. It’s a musical journey and thanks to HENGE, it’s one you can take without leaving your sofa.
Rather ingeniously, the second side of the vinyl edition has been cut with a “parallel groove”: two tracks pressed concentrically tell two different endings. The first tells a dystopian tale of nuclear destruction, the other groove leads the listener to a future full of clean energy via nuclear fusion, and thanks to the wizardry of HENGE the fate of an entire alien civilization is in your hands. A mind-blowing and expansive album, take the Journey To Voltus B.
- Journey To Voltus B is released via Cosmic Dross on 31st January 2025.
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Track List:
- Ascending
- Slingshot
- Hypersleep
- Descending
- Welcome To Voltus
- The Power Of The Atom
- Nuclear Winter
