Eat Static – Science Of The Gods

copy I have has got labels side swapped on all 3 records

Crusty ravers trip to the darkside. Abducted to an alien spaceship, exploring vast unknown corridors where only strange echoes and faint screams can be heard in the distance...

Awesome stuff, their best album yet!

This is a very good album? If you like abstract Drum n Bass, Breaks, Psy-Trance, Goa Trance ... In particular the drum n bass and Breaks then it is very interesting to the ear! This track by one half of Eat Static called OK will make you understand why the DNB tracks on this album are so jam-packed with ideas and flows... https://discogs.versitio.com/artist/158470-Cosmic-Journey-Project ... I really do like this record and that's why I like this lp. Took me time as I avoided psy-trance like the plague when it got too fast and knob twiddly with its fluoro rave gear tripe... Sorry, each to they're own I guess. Anyway, this album is a must for listeners of a more 'out there' taste. This is Trance? Yes but in only the way Eat Static can trance you out... Peace ;)

Of all the Eat Static albums of the '90s, this one holds the strangest attraction. "Implant" is my favorite and I believe their best album from that time, their purest statement with a great balance of fun and psychedelia. But "Science of the Gods," its sequel, which they reportedly spent an insane amount of energy on sound design according to Michael Dog, is their darkest and like many great artists, their boldest, most difficult work. I hearing them play live at Nocturnal Wonderland in 1997 as part of the Big Top Tour, where they showcased much of this album, including an encore with their incomparable alien two-step remix of "Interceptor." In the set, their rendition of "Spawn," with its waves of noise and static, sounded like an extraterrestrial's telepathic brain scream. It bordered on metal and punk, much more intense and raw than anything those genres ever achieved.

But the best thing about "Science" are its drum 'n' bass numbers. This was a curve ball for their fans, many of whom were strictly on the prog-techno and psy-trance tip (in 1997, that genre was going faster and faster in the other direction). But for those who were open to polyrhythm, we got a rare glimpse into a psychedelic form of jungle that never got its proper due, in great part because the London drum 'n' bass fraternity were never going to fully accept Merv and Joie's experiments in their turf (see also Mark Barrott's Future Loop Foundation, their label mate at the time, and who would go onto create today's quality imprint International Feel).

"Interceptor Parts 1 & 2" is a brilliant swoop through beats, warbling piano vamps, crying alien gulls, and morphing bass drops. It's essentially an interstellar dog fight. The computer graphics video that accompanied it (a favorite on MTV's Amp at the time), still holds up because of its sheer creativity. This was the lead single and got two separate releases different from the album version. The first one, which hews closest to the two part album version, extended its peaks and valleys, throwing in more wild sounds, including Eat Static's talent for otherworldly vocalizations.

The second single included the aforementioned "Eat Static Remix" -- one of the most beguiling and timeless compositions in all electronic music in my opinion. It has a low rating on Discogs, probably due to knee jerk listens from more core drum 'n' bass heads (no disrespect there, but again like my point above, gets at why this album was ahead of its time and perhaps too out there and too niche for some). But decades later, it is still a beautifully epic, inventive and snake-winding trip through sci-fi and streetwise territories. The two releases also included excellent takes by T-Power and Decoder.

"Dissection" and "Bodystealers" were the other drum 'n' bass contributions. Both are fantastic. One pops and zaps with echoic chords, including what sounds like the twangs of alien cat guts stretched into a stringed instrument. The other whips you round what sounds like a giant holding cell in Roswell, exploding with little bombs of technoid funk.

All of the other tracks are top notch, including cool experiments with chiller breaks and hypnotic metronomes, like the grooving "Kryll." But it's the drum 'n' bass tracks that haunt me 20 years later. I always wished they had put out much more on this tip. They would do some, but nothing quite like these. So inventive, there's nothing like it. Eat Static would have to switch gears when Planet Dog went on the fritz just a couple years later. Which makes "Science" such a painfully rare and beautiful thing.