Chapter 24 & Philippe Petit: "Treasure Hunt"

It’s hard to make an astronomy-themed record sound authentic, so Greek trio Chapter 24 have dreamt up one which instead works like a star: you’re seeing the light from something created many, many light years ago. Or, in the case of The Red Giant Meets the White Dwarf, something that was created in 2008. For one night in Athens, the band named after a Syd Barrett song teamed up with Italian console doctor Philippe Petit—label executive, self-declared musical travel agent and namesake of the Twin Towers wire walker. Together they jammed under the Greek capital’s BIOS art centre, celebrating 25 years of “musical activities” in the way only cultured Europeans can: by jamming in a Mediterranean art centre, sipping cocktails and crossing jazz beats with soundtracks. Genuine stargazing took a confused back seat to the rhythms of this tightly-synced four-piece, who were happily locked into improvising Krautrock that just happened to have space-related titles. There must have been one brilliant moment when the deceived real astronomers walked out. The realization that the flyers had tricked them must have pissed them off more than cloud cover.

So, for the commemorative studio recordings that have been hashed from that night, it’s goodbye to the synth-scapes of Chapters’ countryman Vangelis and hello to freeform and industrial cartoon music. And clanging pans. And pirates. “Treasure Hunt” is the most colorful/least ambient of the nine Red Giant sessions tracks, almost avoiding space entirely for darker, more backward instrumentals. You might expect death metal based on the opening seconds where a fingerboard gets tortured, but Livieratos, Boulouhtsis and Boulouhtsis (and Petit) take things in another direction, moving away from squealing tabs to fuzzy incidental Pink Panther music. Whoever of the four friends has control of the bass makes it grunt like wild boar, eventually spewing something a vague earthly riff after two minutes of primordial sine waves. Maybe the astronomers should have stuck around after all, as this is what they might hear if Hubble had a microphone and could tune in to an orgy on Phobos. The mondo clanging noises then peck each other to death and psychedelic strains take over, seemingly brought from the same thick swamp the Phantom Band crawled out of. What any of this has to do with buried legendary loot or hidden riches I don’t know, but if it was me going foraging in the undergrowth in the hope of finding a box full of gold, I’d probably take this with me. This, and maybe a shovel.