More

Steve Hillage has had a long and interesting musical life- part of the Canterbury scene in the early 70s, solo and with Kevin Ayres and Soft Machine, then Gong with Daevid Allen (and where he met his partner Miquette Giraudy, his and Miquette's 1979 solo ambient opus Rainbow Dome Musick, production work with Simple Minds in the early 80s and The Charlatans a decade later and from 1989 his and Miquette's ambient/ dance outfit System 7 with The Orb and Youth and he played a key role in establishing the dance tent at Glastonbury.

Steve and Miquette are not standing still. System 7 are back with a new album, Flower Of Life, out later this month. A single came out ahead of it at the end of March, I Want More...

Coldcut's Matt Black is present on I Want More, which starts out with Can inspired bass and then mutates into pulsing synthlines, Matt's demo the launchpad for a soaring, insistent, four- four track that began as a discussion about Miquette's early 70s film soundtrack work, specifically a French underground film from 1969 about heroin addiction in Ibiza called More (to which Pink Floyd contributed the soundtrack). This short clip provides a flavour of the film...

This is Pink Floyd's Main Theme from the soundtrack, a very late 1960s Floyd track- cymbal splashes, wheezy organ, skittery drumming and throbbing bass. The sound of what they called a Happening. 

Main Theme

System 7's album follows in couple of weeks, ten tracks with early 90s ambient/ progressive house grooves and synth sounds. The title track pulses with positivity. On Beulah Alex Paterson from The Orb shows up, crunchy drums, synth squiggles, a Mae West vocal sample and visions of fields filled with dancers. There are faster and thumpier tracks, full on banging psy- trance on Atmosphere and an Eat Static collaboration Transceptor. Penultimate track Bonjour takes us down, three minutes of comedown with a slightly paranoid edge that eventually evens out. Flower Of Life finishes with a System 7 remix of Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society, Dubby Chain Signal is an extended downtempo/ ambient, chill out room delight that could be twice its seven minute length and not outstay its welcome.