Jana Rockstroh, the German musician who records simply as Jaja, composed and performed Music for Space Observation after hours as 2017 was easing into 2018. It was released the first day of the new year. The album contains three longform tracks, each between 22 and 30 minutes, of slow-paced ambient music. As the title suggests, this is space music: outer, inner, room-filling, head-expanding. It’s all loose sine waves given seconds — and, seemingly, eons — to chart their course. Slight modulations lend a sense of development to the glacial tones, texture provides a richness sometimes lost in synth-heavy work, and layers (especially on the opening track, “Far Beyond the Realm of the Stars”) introduce metric play even when there is no self-evident rhythm. While the first two pieces (“Far Beyond” and “Earthrise Over the Moon”) are often lovely and soft, the closing piece, “In the Realm of the Nebulae,” ventures into darker corners of the evening sky, as white noise and urgent drones threaten to encompass the listener.
Album originally posted at jajaouterspace.bandcamp.com. More from Jaja/Rockstroh at cyan-music.com.