The Baldock Transmission by Jon Durant, Colin Edwin, Chris Maitland
Release date: November 7, 2025Label: Alchemy Records
It’s been quite the ride whenever something from Alchemy Records comes in the mail for me to tackle one of their enduring journey’s thanks to reading one of Sid Smith’s podcasts back, I believe it was 2014 after I had graduated from junior college, discovering Burnt Belief’s composition ‘Hover’ from the Etymology album. And my life changed when I bought the album thanks to Podcasts from the Yellow Room.
There’s no denying that Porcupine Tree alumnus’s bassist Colin Edwin and drummer Chris Maitland have always kept the spirit of the electronic grooves vibrated when it comes to their collaboration with fellow guitarist Jon Durant who has worked with Edwin since 2012 going back to their Burnt Belief debut album, followed by Etymology, Emergent, and Mutual Isolation.
It’s always something to see what kind of mysterious treat they would come up with next. That leads us into The Baldock Transmission. When you think of a title like The Baldock Transmission, you think of the 1984 sci-fi film, The Philadelphia Experiment starring Michael Pare and Nancy Allen.
But this album takes on a whole new stratosphere of taking listeners into unbelievable results with minimal, surreal, darker, and hypnotic results that will put you in a trance and will make you be for the ride that’s about to unfold. Edwin and Maitland wanted to prove listeners that they are more than just the members of Porcupine Tree by delving into the oceans of an underwater city, revealing it to be something wonderful and something extraordinary beyond the surface.
There’s something sinister behind the ‘Solar Season Signal’ which features an under watery turned spacey hallucination where the glowing static, tape rewinding to the beginning, early Floydian bass work that speaks of the Ummagumma period, and communicating different life forms on other planets, makes the arrangements to be quite a disturbing meditation for the listener’s earphones to be opened.
For ‘Journey to Rebhu’ there is a ride in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, set in the futuristic timeline in the 23rd century where Earth has now become a bacterial-infected set as fellow Earthlings travel to another planet to start a new chapter in their daily lives. Here, Durant channels his Terje Rypdal textures, going up and down the fretboard as Durant and Maitland go in this heavier jazz-metallic rock form setting the controls for the heart of the planet.
The moment the static clears up for the ‘Stationary Orbit’ to start, there’s such a joyful groove between the trio as they go in this experimentation to lay down the funk and get your freak on to heads us into the mothership, waiting for us to be a part of their journey and make the jump to light-speed like a giant mo-fo as the train takes us into an ominous yet slowed approach into the late ‘70s post-punk atmosphere for the ‘Mechanical Tears’ to appear.
When I think of a track like this, I think of the arrangements Andy Summers had done during the Zenyatta Mondatta period from the Police embarking to tackle one of his pieces to prove that they were more than charted success. And that’s what Durant is doing, he’s honouring Summers’ arrangements to take you into the deserted landscapes in the hottest part of Egypt with a coolness and chilled-out composition the trio walk in the sand, to go towards the pharoah’s tomb.
The best way to listen to The Baldock Transmission is by putting on your headphones and turn off your mind, relax, you might jump at certain moments, but perhaps there is more to where that comes from. And it is only just the beginning for the transmission to start all frequencies.
