Volplane

The utter conviction and stark yet fiery edges of Bright Channel's music contrast sharply with the swirling, drifting, ethereal sound of Volplane, the previous project of Jeff Suthers and Shannon Stein. From 1997 to 1999, prior to forming Bright Channel, the duo wrote atmospheric music on par with the shoegazers...

By Tom Murphy

August 3, 2006

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The utter conviction and stark yet fiery edges of Bright Channel's music contrast sharply with the swirling, drifting, ethereal sound of Volplane, the previous project of Jeff Suthers and Shannon Stein. From 1997 to 1999, prior to forming Bright Channel, the duo wrote atmospheric music on par with the shoegazers of the early '90s, hallmarked by a heady blending of soaring dissonance, glittering ambience and a cavernous low end, coupled with melodies as beautiful as a clear night sky away from the big city. Even a cursory listen to the act's seventeen-track retrospective evokes the otherworldly calm and obsessive intensity of the euphoric fevers found in a Werner Herzog film. Or, to put it another way, if the hypnogogic state had a specific frequency, it would most likely be found in a Volplane song. A fearless dive into the wide expanses of inner space, 1997 - 1999 is breathtaking from beginning to end.

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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