Not too often, some music comes wafting in that somehow seems to encapsulate something, hmmm, perhaps like the way a lot of
us having been feeling lately, or maybe like something weÕve most of us been looking for. One little taste of this gloriously gorgeous record, this blissful thing, to put it plainly and
probably a bit too sincerely, and it might come clear what weÕve been missing, or maybe ought to have been. Runddans is a lovingly crazy quilt of sonic sapphire that finds Todd
Rundgren in collaboration with Norwegian electronics fellas Hans-Peter Lindstrom and Emil Nikolaisen (Serena-Maneesh) in a recapturing of the peculiarly resonant mix of yearning
sweet-soul, psychedelic whimsy and open-minded facing-the-void that Rundgren did in fact invent on his Ô70s masterwerks A Wizard A True Star, Todd and Initiation. These
were deeply layered, LSD-inspired works that revealed areas of sonic space in which the human being faces the Void, and somewhat happily finds not a void but a universe-is-terrifyingly-full
gargantuousness ÐÐ an immensity that just is and which of course impliesÉIn just one track, 39 minutes of music, Runddans takes several variations on the same massively blissful descending
chord pattern, and it gets thin and mad thick as it resurfaces reguised amid vocal Todd choirs, squealing guitars, splintered sundry electronic folderol and angles and views and juxtapositions.
Over and over, Rundgren sings, ÒPut your arms around me,Ó and itÕs not like thereÕs irony in it. That message keeps this ever-ballooning train ride through the Milky Way not earthbound as
such but utterly, fantastically humane.
ÐÐ John Payne
