Essentially a duo comprising Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower, 'Wounded Galaxies' showcases major new developments, Album opener 'How Acla Disappeared From Earth' rides on celestial waves of shimmering synthesisers and vocals, with York's duduk providing rhapsodic arabesques. The album's longest piece, 'The Woods Are Alive With the Smell of His Coming' is a 17-minute Pagan opus which fully manifests CYCLOBE's flair for endless invention, developing from a subtly shifting percussive motif, through multiple layers and dizzying cello crescendos, into a truly disorientating sonic invocation. In'We'll Witness the Resurrection of Dead Butterflies (Three Moons)', Stapleton's hurdy-gurdy is transmuted into a keening blizzard of sound. The haunting 'Sleeper', with its clustered piano chords and Brown's beautiful, disembodied vocals, evokes an elegant otherworldliness that's finally overwhelmed by the monstrous electronic paroxysm of 'Wounded Galaxies Tap at the Window', concluding the album on surges of rapturous cosmic convulsion. Thrower and Brown are well known for their work in the legendary group COIL. With 'Wounded Galaxies', the group has not only produced their finest and most ambitious work to date, they've created an album which can stand tall with the year's most innovative and exciting releases. (Deluxe laminated wallet, poster insert by Alex Rose, and 4-page booklet).