''Rainbow Dome Musick'' is the fifth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

Steve Hillage Stephen Simpson Hillage (born 2 August 1951) is an English musician, best known as a guitarist. He is associated with the Canterbury scene and has worked in experimental domains since the late 1960s. Besides his solo sound recording and reprodu ...

, originally released in 1979. It is a departure from his previous albums, consisting of two long ambient songs recorded in collaboration with his long-time partner

Miquette Giraudy Miquette Giraudy is a French keyboard player and vocalist, best known for her work in Gong, and with her partner Steve Hillage. She and Hillage form the core of the ambient band System 7. She has also worked as an actress, film editor and writer ...

Background and recording

The album was commissioned for performance at the 1979 Mind-Body-Spirit Festival, held at

Olympia London Olympia London, sometimes referred to as the Olympia Exhibition Centre, is an exhibition centre, event space and conference centre in West Kensington, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, London, England. A range of internation ...

. It was recorded at Om in January 1979. The equipment engineer was John Newsham. The Rainbow Dome concept was created by Rupert Atwill.

Reception

In his book ''The Music's All that Matters: A History of Progressive Rock'', Paul Stump commented that "it was perhaps Hillage's most spiritually saturated work, 1979's ''Rainbow Dome Musick'', which ensured his place in rock history some ten years after the event. ... its celestial, looping synthesizers and glissando guitar provided as hypnotic and mesmerizing a multi-track experience as any heard in Progressive, or indeed in rock at that point." A retrospective review by Mike DeGagne in ''

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

'' asserted that the album puts Hillage's varied musical background to strong use in both of the pieces, creating "a relaxing and pleasantly divergent journey through a sorted spectrum of instruments". It was ranked as one of the 1,000 greatest albums of all time by ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

''.http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/guardian100.ht

Track listing

Personnel

– lead

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...

glissando In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a glide from one pitch to another (). It is an Italianized musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In some contexts, it is distinguished from the co ...

Fender Rhodes The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, th ...

, ARP

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

Moog synthesizer The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 20 ...

– double

sequencer Sequencer may refer to: Technology * Drum sequencer (controller), an electromechanical system for controlling a sequence of events automatically * DNA sequencer, a machine used to automatically produce a sequence readout from a biological DNA sam ...

ARP Omni The ARP Omni was a polyphonic analog synthesizer manufactured by ARP Instruments, Inc. Overview The Omni featured preset, electronically generated Orchestral ensemble String voices including polyphonic Violin and Viola sounds as well as mono ...

, Tibetan bells * Rupert Atwill – Eventide Harmoniser

References

External links

Rainbow Dome Musick at discogs.com
{{Authority control Steve Hillage albums 1979 albums Albums produced by Steve Hillage Virgin Records albums