Astral Industries pluck out a cult ambient peach for reissue with Chi’s The Original Recordings (1985); a heady collection of communal invocations written on a farm in Holland during the fertile early ‘80s era of new age and post-punk exploration.
This is essentially the comprehensive version of The Original Recordings, compiling all tracks from their s/t tape and the later CD reissue - including both Kuhl II and Hopi - to frame their meditative, electro-acoustic wanderlust in all its dreamy effect.

Using a Juno 60 and JX3P synths, coupled with a few guitars, handmade percussion, flutes, organs and tape-loops, the six-piece ensemble recorded from summer, “all the doors and windows were open; birds flew in and out” thru the winter months, where “we sat close together, no hearing, only blankets, candles and brandy”, playing from late morning until sunrise to realise a drifting, gentle sound that hearkened back to classic kosmische from neighbouring Germany, but trimming away some of that sound’s cliche’s to leave a more minimalist, spectral sort of music for relaxation and meditation.

The recordings are wonderfully spacious, allowing the atmosphere of their environment to perfuse the music’s broad, sweeping layers and mingle with their pineal vision to become a vital, animated part of the record itself. For comparison, these recordings share certain similarities with the kind of records recently reissued by Amsterdam’s Music From Memory label, yet there’s something more mystic, less sweetened about Chi’s music that perhaps places it in a psychedelic Dutch lineage with later, ambient elements of Psychick Warriors of Gaia, or even the gentle, tactile tone of Machinefabriek music also made out in the sticks.  Definitely one to swoon for - highly recommended!