Chris Bocast

Take every sci-fi soundtrack you ever heard, roll them into a ball and throw them into a black hole. Now get ready for some real space music. Chris Bocast has created a soundtrack for the mind that makes other stuff pale in comparison even in zero-G. Ambient, with a generous helping of electronic, Bocast’s new album Through the Airlock generates that floating in space feeling from the very first chord.

Bocast’s album takes you on a journey through far space to a strange new planet that draws you in and then reveals its history in exciting, extraordinary music. Within are great discoveries that hold ominous clues to ancient civilizations. Some of them you really don’t want to know about. Chris Bocast is the chief pilot on this journey playing electric guitar, ebow, moog synthesizer and piano. I’m not surprised if there is a theremin in there somewhere. This is one of those seamless albums where the music segues so tightly that it sounds like one continuous track. Nothing wrong with that. Strap in, hold fast…and let the journey begin.

Intake, the first cut is the beginning of the voyage. It is a bouncy energy pulse tune with industrial overtones that bangs around from side to side. It is a sense of absorption more than ingestion. It free falls into the tune Numinous. Numinous is a track about things unexplained, things way beyond our comprehension. It is subtle blue waves that come over you and perhaps begin a transmogrification. We will only know the outcome by the end of the journey.

There is a hole detected on the surface of this planet. It is so deep that measurements are difficult to obtain. It reflects blinding blue-white light and it has glossy sides. It is the Ice Cauldron. As you edge closer you feel the pull. The force is so strong that you may not be able to resist. Low harmonics swirl around you as electric guitar riffs take on a mesmerizing tone. You keep pulling and pulling and finally you fall and find yourself not where you were.

The tune Charred Relic Drifting says they were different from us. Very different indeed. The remains suggest they had different needs to their physical being, but they still needed enclosures; protection from the invisible dangers of space. Bright swells and roaring tones produce an eerie atmosphere that suggests a vastness to our surroundings. It is cold. Oh, so very cold. The frightening part? Their ship was a hundred times the size of our vehicle.

Even as you are in Cold Sleep your mind is still wide awake. Unfortunately, it can not possibly process the incredible amounts of data it has absorbed in the first part of the journey. You drift with the music that has taken up residence in your head. Life has been reduced to half speed and so are your thoughts. You beg to wake up. This was my favorite track on Through the Airlock.

You arrive at an immense clearing on the surface of the rocky planet and you realize that this is The Dry Lake you saw from above. It was obviously made by a guided hand, more so than a natural phenomenon. What purpose did it serve on this craggy plain and what made it dry up? Echoing ambient waves of warm red music reflect off the edges of the horizons and into your psyche. It is that big.

Heart's Rest is one of the lightest tunes on the album and one of the best. With a bit of soothing inorganic voice Bocast creates that drifting quality. The music gives improved strength to your recuperative powers. For some unexplained reason your heart is lighter and your spirit refreshed.

The Upwelling is the final leg of our flight. Like your life passing before your eyes, all the twists and turns and stops and starts of your passage are there in your mind. And somewhere in there is a new beginning and a memory of new found friends. This is a wondrous track to end the album.

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Chris Bocast has five previously released albums. He is the lead guitarist for the band Boondoggle. He lives in an undisclosed location somewhere in Colorado. Oh, yeah, he plays Ska too.

Bocast is the quintessential sky pilot as he takes you on an ambient/electronic trip farther out then anyone else has ever ventured. And then brings you back! - New Age Reporter - 7/30/2005

Take every sci-fi soundtrack you ever heard, roll them into a ball and throw them into a black hole. Now get ready for some real space music. Chris Bocast has created a soundtrack for the mind that makes other stuff pale in comparison even in zero-G. Ambient, with a generous helping of electronic, Bocast’s new album Through the Airlock generates that floating in space feeling from the very first chord.

Bocast’s album takes you on a journey through far space to a strange new planet that draws you in and then reveals its history in exciting, extraordinary music. Within are great discoveries that hold ominous clues to ancient civilizations. Some of them you really don’t want to know about. Chris Bocast is the chief pilot on this journey playing electric guitar, ebow, moog synthesizer and piano. I’m not surprised if there is a theremin in there somewhere. This is one of those seamless albums where the music segues so tightly that it sounds like one continuous track. Nothing wrong with that. Strap in, hold fast…and let the journey begin.

Intake, the first cut is the beginning of the voyage. It is a bouncy energy pulse tune with industrial overtones that bangs around from side to side. It is a sense of absorption more than ingestion. It free falls into the tune Numinous. Numinous is a track about things unexplained, things way beyond our comprehension. It is subtle blue waves that come over you and perhaps begin a transmogrification. We will only know the outcome by the end of the journey.

There is a hole detected on the surface of this planet. It is so deep that measurements are difficult to obtain. It reflects blinding blue-white light and it has glossy sides. It is the Ice Cauldron. As you edge closer you feel the pull. The force is so strong that you may not be able to resist. Low harmonics swirl around you as electric guitar riffs take on a mesmerizing tone. You keep pulling and pulling and finally you fall and find yourself not where you were.

The tune Charred Relic Drifting says they were different from us. Very different indeed. The remains suggest they had different needs to their physical being, but they still needed enclosures; protection from the invisible dangers of space. Bright swells and roaring tones produce an eerie atmosphere that suggests a vastness to our surroundings. It is cold. Oh, so very cold. The frightening part? Their ship was a hundred times the size of our vehicle.

Even as you are in Cold Sleep your mind is still wide awake. Unfortunately, it can not possibly process the incredible amounts of data it has absorbed in the first part of the journey. You drift with the music that has taken up residence in your head. Life has been reduced to half speed and so are your thoughts. You beg to wake up. This was my favorite track on Through the Airlock.

You arrive at an immense clearing on the surface of the rocky planet and you realize that this is The Dry Lake you saw from above. It was obviously made by a guided hand, more so than a natural phenomenon. What purpose did it serve on this craggy plain and what made it dry up? Echoing ambient waves of warm red music reflect off the edges of the horizons and into your psyche. It is that big.

Heart's Rest is one of the lightest tunes on the album and one of the best. With a bit of soothing inorganic voice Bocast creates that drifting quality. The music gives improved strength to your recuperative powers. For some unexplained reason your heart is lighter and your spirit refreshed.

The Upwelling is the final leg of our flight. Like your life passing before your eyes, all the twists and turns and stops and starts of your passage are there in your mind. And somewhere in there is a new beginning and a memory of new found friends. This is a wondrous track to end the album.

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Chris Bocast has five previously released albums. He is the lead guitarist for the band Boondoggle. He lives in an undisclosed location somewhere in Colorado. Oh, yeah, he plays Ska too.

Bocast is the quintessential sky pilot as he takes you on an ambient/electronic trip farther out then anyone else has ever ventured. And then brings you back! - New Age Reporter - 7/30/2005

Chris Bocast?Through the Airlock?
What begins as cerebral snapshots of icy exactitude evolves into a miasmic flow of tonal outreach as though breaking through the time/space continuum into a new awareness for incomprehensible chronological phenomena. A comparison to 2001: A Space Odyssey is unavoidable.
Before a field of blissful melody, one may float beyond the horizon of physicality into the arms of the loving eternal. gorgeous stuff like if Harold Budd's The Pearl got mashed up with Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Chris Bocast's performances on piano, synthesizer and processed electric guitar are all effects of a sensibility for the tasteful relation of new musical worlds.
- Steamboat Springs Local 4/2005

Chris Bocast?Through the Airlock?
What begins as cerebral snapshots of icy exactitude evolves into a miasmic flow of tonal outreach as though breaking through the time/space continuum into a new awareness for incomprehensible chronological phenomena. A comparison to 2001: A Space Odyssey is unavoidable.
Before a field of blissful melody, one may float beyond the horizon of physicality into the arms of the loving eternal. gorgeous stuff like if Harold Budd's The Pearl got mashed up with Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Chris Bocast's performances on piano, synthesizer and processed electric guitar are all effects of a sensibility for the tasteful relation of new musical worlds.
- Steamboat Springs Local 4/2005