Gert Emmens is a Dutch composer. If it was 1971 his music would be considered part of the "Berlin School of Electronic Music". In the 21st Century they just call it "New Age".
I like Gert Emmens. I discovered him about five years ago whilst browsing the Electronic/New Age newsgroups, and I've got six or seven of his albums now. Gert's music is typified by soft pulsating electronic rhythms and soaring keyboards, and tracks which are between 10 and 20 minutes long. It's difficult to describe music like this to someone who's not familiar with it, but think Tangerine Dream, or Vangelis (the "Blade Runner" soundtrack), or even Jean Michel Jarre. It's not as "poppy" as Jarre, as there are huge swathes of "ambient" sections (bits of music with no beat) and you can't really dance to it. However if you're willing to just sit back and relax for 50 minutes, the album will take you on a beautiful and majestic journey (to be honest you might even fall asleep to it!). However once you discover what the album is actually about, the music takes on a whole new meaning...
The clue is in the track titles:
RendezVous With 2004 MN4, When Darkness Falls Upon The Earth, Casting Shadows On The Cold Ground, The Morning After
2004 MN4 is the designation of a Near Earth Asteroid that has been tracked since discovery in 2004, and which currently (they revise it all the time) has a 1 in 250,000 chance of impacting the Earth in 2036. Current estimations of impact energy are 510 megatons. 50-60 times greater than the Tunguska Event and 3 times greater than the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. The largest Hydrogen bomb ever exploded, the Tsar Bomba, was around 50 Megatons.
Now go and listen to the album after finding that out. Not so nice now is it!
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