Aythar's stellar debut on Carpe Sonum represents one of the more obvious distillations of the late Pete Namlook's ambient space music mantras. With its expansive, irising synths and vast waves of interstellar sequences yawning out into the void, Astronautica recalls nothing less than many numerous classic 70s sides of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Neuronium, et al., yet the preening atmospheres, fraught with both palpable tension and a sense of wonder, sound fresh and consistently inviting. Such pedigree means that contemporary space music artists have quite a large stylistic well to draw from, simultaneously aware of the rich heritage of sounds behind them while being mindful to avoid the kind of hackneyed clichés that tend to run rampant in the field. Aythar has no such problem.