Two posts ago, I wrote about an 80s post-punker who briefly got bitten by the possibilities of dance music. Now, it’s time to enjoy the work of a pair of 70s prog-rockers who have enjoyed an ongoing 30 year love affair with the genre. Former Gong members, Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy had already experimented with making ambient music long before they set up System 7. Music from Hillage's 1979 album, Rainbow Dome Musick had been played by Alex Paterson of The Orb in DJ sets during the late 80s and this appears to have opened the idea for Hillage and Giraudy to form System 7 in 1989.
Had 7:7 Expansion sounded anything like the music on Rainbow Dome Musick, I would have passed on it, but this is a 100% stone-cold classic banger. Unlike some of the other mixes of this track, the Nutritious Mix dials down the Aboriginal Outback feel in place of a slightly more cosmic, spacey vibe albeit one garnished with synths/guitar sounds that mix gristle with liquidity. But it’s the build to total dancefloor euphoria at 6:02 that makes the track. It was enough to sneak 7:7 Expansion into the UK Top 40 Singles Chart.
Alongside this, Peel played a track from Hillage’s 1977 LP, Motivation Radio called Saucer Surfing, which I would have probably included here had it not featured those awful, processed, metallic voice effects of the late 70s, which were used to denote intergalactic speech, and which go through me like nails down a blackboard.
Video courtesy of Confusion in Motion.
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