BIOSCOPE
Popcorn at the ready as Marillion’s Steve Rothery and Tangerine Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning deliver cinematic soundscapes and musical moving pictures on widescreen debut album.
Words: David West
Edited by Dave Everley prog.reviews@futurenet.com
Illustration: Mark Leary
Apillar of the neo-prog world hangs out with the heir apparent of the Berlin School of electronica in this first collaboration between latterday Tangerine Dream man, Thorsten Quaeschning, and Marillion’s Steve Rothery. The album’s unifying theme is the moving image, a fitting subject in light of all the film soundtracks in the Tangerine Dream discography and Rothery’s avowed enthusiasm for photography. That concept informs the song titles and the name of the project itself. Derived from the Greek words meaning ‘life’ and ‘to look’, the pair called their collaboration Bioscope after an early film projector, while Gentō takes its name from a 17th-century Japanese magic lantern, a forerunner of the moving picture.