Quarkspace is Chet Santia, Jay Swanson, Dave Wexler, Paul Williams and Darren Gough. These human beings achieve an interstellar flair with a surprisingly minimal use of synthesizers. It is through the ethereal fusion of more traditional instruments that Quarkspace conjures their sonic evocations, immersing the listener in a cosmic void that quickly fills with the band's inspiring compositions.

QUARKSPACE: Live Orion (CD on Eternity's Jest Records)

This 68-minute CD was recorded live at the Orion Space Rock Festival in Baltimore, 1997. This performance superbly captures the band's atmospheric yet energetic sound.

There are some vocals, but the songs are primarily instrumental dreams of fire. Lilting keyboards are present in profusion: swooping in astral fields, or riffing in a progressive jazz manner. Sinuous percussives provide lively tempos for the cosmic journeys, whether in abstract peripheral structure, or pounding away in lizardly rhythms. A subtle bassline slithers through the mix. But the guitars are the dominant factor. Flaming guitars explode with teeth-grinding appeal one minute, then stray into glissando nebulas the next. The unpredictability of this melodic music is a thrilling aspect to the alliance these instruments maintain.

Yet, with all these dynamics, the music of Quarkspace possesses an ethereal calm, a dreaminess that carries the listener from their physical environment to regions of fancy, where the defining factors are only confined by the audience's imagination.

RealAudio samples:

Close to the Whipping Post
Air
Siren Space

QUARKSPACE: The Hidden Moon (double CD on Eternity's Jest Records)

This 1999 double CD features 146 minutes of Quarkspace, rocking the studio with their powerful space music, bringing the wonders of the cosmos to cavort on earthly turf and in human ears.

Although the searing guitars still play an integral part in this astral (mostly instrumental) music, the keyboards have expanded to boldly play where no man has gone before. The percussives have adopted a lusher flair, driving the melodies with a primal urgency. Even the bass has become more prominent, thundering with sensuous vibrations, underpinning the cosmic tuneage with the presence of a solid foundation, while counterparting the organic drumming with ricocheting e-perc.

These instruments have learned to cooperate even more than before, blending and melting into a fusion of sound that takes on an extraterrestrial life of its own. The influence of Hawkwind (circa "Space Ritual") has risen to infect the jam-aspects of the compositions, with spiraling guitar riffs and swirling synthi timbres. Whether the music is a surging celestial jam or a boiling dose of space funk or a melancholy ballad or a stretch of nebulous ambience, Quarkspace deliver with unbridled passion and relentless stamina.

This is not the type of music that looks up at the sky, it becomes the sky. The songs expand to fill the sky, saturating the void with their astral sense of wonder. This music visits other worlds, merging with the mysteries that dwell beneath alien sunlight. The tuneage breathes these foreign atmospheres, transmuting the unfamiliar noble gases into shimmering mists of sonic transcendence, then exhales these melodies into the listeners' auditory canals. Your head becomes the music's final destination, a voyage that has spanned galactic vistas to return to whisper its gathering of secrets in your ear.

QUARKSPACE: Spacefolds 5 (CD EP on Eternity's Jest Records)

This release is the fifth in the band's series of improvised sonic "Spacefolds" documents. (The previous four "Spacefold" volumes were cassette releases, which are now sadly out of print.)

If you think "improv" means unfocused and indulgent, then Quarkspace's "Spacefolds 5" is not for you. This band's tightness flourishes under improvisational conditions.

Snarling guitar ushers you into a chamber of snappy rhythms. You find yourself ankle-deep in sultry basslines. Synthesizers bleep and churn, swirling the chamber's air currents with frolicsome weirdness. A deeper rumble surges at the horizons that rim the room, a chorus of jet-exhausts thundering with distant passage. The keyboards take up the percussive cycles as the riff changes. Now the music plummets into hyperdrive, accelerating the tempo and deviating the melody. The instruments are inflating, their individual contributions melting together to form unearthly structures. These new riffs tower over you, blazing into the sky with enticing fury. Just as you are about to go supraluminal, sneaky percussive rhythms call to you, luring you back into the physical universe.

And that's just the first of seven sonic excursions contained on this 71-minute CD EP from 1999. But then, you'd only notice that by watching the CD counter, as these improv pieces flow together seamlessly into a hyper-harmonic auralscape.

NATIONAL STEAM: National Steam (CD on Eternity's Jest Records)

National Steam is an offshoot project by Quarkspace's Dave Wexler and Paul Williams. This self-titled 69-minute CD was released in 1998. Six of the eleven tracks are improv pieces, applying that sparkling fire found on the Quarkspace releases.

Jump aboard the National Steam express, departing for the interstellar void with a full load of astral tuneage. Lively keyboards fill the air with tumbling riffs and burbling electronic effects. Percussion scampers through the mix, punctuating the flowing melodies with locomotion. But the emphasis is on the electronics: sweetly sing-song pitches, cyclic loops, intricate keys and sultry sequencers. Then suddenly, four songs in, the guitar marks its entrance with a twisted spinning fury, tearing its way through the keyboard dominance like . . . a train achieving escape velocity. Some vocals exist in this music, but their presence is infrequent.

Remarkably spacey, the compositions are delightfully entertaining. The music explodes with epic ascendance, reaching cosmic proportions with melodic ease.

RealAudio samples:

Pennsylvania Special
The Highs of March
Tronhop Groov
Amoeba