Deep Breakfast (1984) has, to begin with, that necessary layer of legend that predisposes you in its favor from the start. It seems that Ray Lynch and his wife recorded this and the previous album in a rather homemade way, and in their own home they sold them before they could get distribution from an official record company. We all like the handmade, what we know that its author has had a hard time to get it off the ground.
Indeed, many of the tracks on Deep Breakfast sound so homemade that, at times, one feels as if one could reproduce them just like that with an organ. This should be understood in the best possible sense, and bearing in mind at all times that it is one thing to have modest means at one's disposal and another to not know how to make the most of them. Ray Lynch manages, by means of certain sound effects and a production as simple as it was to be expected from an originally self-released album, to separate his magnificent compositions from the sound of the carnies with goat-balancing goats to approach at times the sound of the greats.
The album is a completely independent collection that works as a musical microcosm in which one can find everything from pieces for a crystalline synthesizer with sequencers in the background, to themes with violin and flute perfectly framed in orthodox minimalism. And, whether Lynch is aware of it or not, Deep Breakfast seems to be very accurately steeped in reminiscences of classic artists of electronic and instrumental music in general, from touches of early Vangelis and Tomita to Jarre's atmospheres, both the one who composed Oxygene and the one who would later release works such as Revolutions. There are even moments, for example in the second track The Oh of Pleasure, that remind me of the magical atmospheres of Giorgio Moroder in The Neverending Story.
I would not downplay the importance of the more transcendental, orientalist and homeopathic aspects of Ray Lynch's work, but I think that all this is subordinated to the display of imagination and creativity of an album that I do not quite conceive as intended for a yoga session. For example, I can't conceive of listening to the fresh and fun Celestial Soda Pop without following the rhythm with the tip of my toe. I think Deep Breakfast is above all a musical amusement that comes from what not all new age artists have: inspiration and ambition to do something great.
