Optica – All The Colours Of The Rainbow

Muzik Magazine (Calvin Bush) gave this a zero out of five review in their first issue (June 1995). What was their problem ?
This is just pleasing music, nothing to get hot under the collar about, either for or against.

Wow! 2015 this album still impresses with its its colourful 90's nostalgic sound - a good thing! Using a variety of classic 90's genres from non dance spacey cosmic trance to drifting mind ambient, trippy swirling like acid, chilled dubby rhythms, and of-course blissful ambient and hypnotizing psychedelic beats. A combination that holds incredibly well together delivering twists and turns across its vibrant flowing analogue multi-layered music as genres used on their own, or together, bring a nice balance between head-dance, dubby tranquillity, and downtempo chilling. The album flows swiftly feeling cosmically organic as genres cross paths at times, yet never lose focus or momentum, or with any one style getting over used. Jake(RIP), collaborating with Brian Trowser, bring a sublime flowing progression feel to the album mixing and using varied tempos and genres with thought and interesting composition delivering plenty of cool squelchy melodies, bouncy rhythms, catchy beats, and lush chilled ambient while holding this album so well together. Even the more upbeat trance and psychedelic beats sections work well avoiding the cheesiness & repetitive banging nature that's sometimes associated with psy/goa trance music - but certainly not here! This is a album that delivers a mixing-pot of trance, ambient, psy, and dub music with a wonderful mind listening experience with music that's full of colour, joy, trippiness, and thoughts for the imagination. A great album not just for the 90's, but also for the now & present & future!.

A great mind trip! 8.5/10

RIP Jake Stephenson.

Mmmm, this is such a great album. The late Jake Stephenson and the Kinetix label released so much good music back in the 90's. From the deep, spacey ambient sounds of Crystal Moon, Alien Mutation and Indigo Egg to the fast, loud and nothing but MAD acidic sounds of Shamanic Tribes on Acid. And especially, all the magical sounds inbetween, from Optica and Transfinite. This was the true Kinetix-sound, spacey psychedelic trance (without any goa-melodies) with pretty soft beats.

This was my first Kinetix-album and is still my favourite. Every single track here is stellar, but my favourite has to be Somniferum (Rainbow reconstruction mix). The "mainlead" that starts around 02:37 is amazing. the Infinity Project-title "When sound becomes colour"? After listening to this song - on a BIG soundsystem - you'll know what they meant! Spirals...

If you like your old schooul trance music spacey and trippy, rather than banging and loud, then do yourself a favour and order some Kinetix-stuf on their website. It's also great to see (and hear, of course) the roots of the genious minds of Jake Stephenson and the living legend Matt Hillier (Ishq, Ishvara, Elve etc.).