Audiopile Review: More great imaginary soundtracking from the Castles In Space imprint, who issue their second release for Portuguese outfit Stellarays. Much like Greg Foat and his Off-Piste album, the group here are inspired by winter sport and adventure, utilizing a battery of vintage synths to conjure epic slaloming, the slow rise upwards on the ski lift, and the bucolic calm of sitting atop a mountain with the world below in view. Another beauty from CiS.

The inspiration for winter Resort Music is derived from a childhood passion for Winter Sports. It’s all about the spooky synths, mainlining radiophonic electronics, subconscious TV memories and an awe about what these athletes could do on the slopes when you were living in the suburbs.

Can anyone forget the glowing figure-skaters, dancing into the public consciousness? The perfect beauty that melted girl’s and boy’s hearts around the world. Sunday afternoons spent watching guys flying on long jumps into the endless white cosmos. Never really sure what was happening, but just thinking “I want to be in the chalets with these people, hitting the glühwein. An alien, unreachable world where fabulous people were doing fabulous things.

Portugal’s Stellarays were also watching and have distilled these memories into a gloriously authentic reimagination of how those memories still reside within us. Winter Resort Music is such a potent memory bomb which takes what we know and enhances it in order to make it better. A prism of nostalgia that speaks to the purity of the whiteout.

This wonderfully handsome release with artwork by Castles in Space mainstay, Nick Taylor is a perfect artefact of library music, beautifully put together by Bruno, Centeio and Corinna.

It pains my heart to report that this is a posthumous release for dear Bruno, who we lost last year at the ridiculously unjust age of fifty.
Safe travels, my friend. May your slopes be finely manicured as you head down the cresta runs to the great frozen lakes. Salut!