Melting Euphoria were formed in San Francisco by keyboardist Don Falcone (already active in the Thessalonians) and by bassist Anthony "Forti" Budziszewski and drummer Mychael Merrill. They debuted with Through The Strands Of Time (Stratospheric, 1994), a work characterized by spacey synthesizer sounds and tribal drumming. In many ways, the format (futuristic electronic vignettes with a subliminal psychological underpinning) evoked Brian Eno's Before And After Science, but the first track unmistakably identified Melting Euphoria's main influence: Inner Vastness of Space echoes the trance and the suspense of Pink Floyd's Set The controls for the Heart of the Sun, amid galactic sound effects that hark back ro Gong's Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy. The Gong influence extends to Pondering Ravenscourt, that couples effervescent jazz-rock jamming and symphonic drones a` la Klaus Schulze; while the Pink Floyd obsession transpires from the soaring raga of Area 51, its middle-eastern psalm-like beginning and its insistent, delirious beat. Additionally, Of Misting Eyes and Lavender borrows the demonic rhythmic progression of Popol Vuh's Phallus Dei. The best display of the trio's instrumental skills is Azimuth Beyond, a cohesive, viscous, breathless stream of melodic grandeur that beats the Ozric Tentacles at their own game. The nine-minute Disappearance of a Friend stands out as something radically different, a form of electronic minimalism filtered through the eyes of Walter Carlos that fades away in an orbit of dub-like clouds of reverbs and lazy beats. The jubilant and pounding anthem of Venusian Skylight was even more unique, electronic rock'n'roll a` la Hawkwind, Heldon and Be Bop Deluxe. The synthesis offered by this album was truly a synthesis of two worlds, the world of 1960s drug-addicted hippies and the world of 1990s high-tech addicted cyberpunks, one a self-centered spiritual world and the other a visionary but angst-ridden world. The only drawback is the spoken words that introduce and accompany the songs, that somehow reduce the impact of the band's vision.

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