Bioscope - Gentō

Gentō is the first album emerging from the highly anticipated collaborative project from guitar maestro Steve Rothery (Marillion) and electronic visionary Thorsten Quaeschning (Tangerine Dream), called Bioscope. Each of the five instrumental tracks takes its inspiration from man's endearing fascination with the moving image. They weave together Rothery’s emotive, melodic guitar work with Quaeschning’s expansive soundscapes, creating a mesmerizing journey through light and darkness, memory, and imagination, featuring an amazing performance by Elbow’s drummer Alex Reeves on all tracks. With soaring guitar solos that evoke classic progressive rock to hypnotic sequencer-driven passages reminiscent of Berlin School electronica, the album flows like a soundtrack to an unmade film. The album’s unifying theme is the moving image A fitting subject in light of all the film soundtracks in the Tangerine Dream discography and Rothery’s enthusiasm for photography. The concept informs the song titles and the name of the project itself. Derived from the Greek words meaning ‘life’ and ‘to look,’ the pair called their collaboration Bioscope after an early film projector, while Gentō takes its name from a 17th-century Japanese magic lantern. A fairer reference point from Rothery’s back catalogue would be his 2014 album “The Ghosts Of Pripyat”, in terms of tone and atmosphere, if not production and instrumentation. Steve’s guitar style is so distinctive that he still sounds like himself even when framed in a very different context to his day job.