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Transits:
There are two specific
points in James's career that illustrate the power of astrological transits,
or when planetary cycles create aspects to planetary
positions in one's birthchart. In early 1993, James signed with Warp Records,
a highly successful (in part due to James) and visible electronica label from
Great Britain. After years–nearly a decade–of djing London clubs and creating
his own unique brand of electronica, James's persistence paid off. At this
time, Jupiter conjunct James's natal Uranus. If there is one planetary transit
that so consistently correlates with the manifestation of the archetypal energies
involved, it is this pairing. Time and time again, when one looks at Western
history or the specific charts of artists or innovators in any field, when
Jupiter conjoins Uranus, success is granted to experimentation and creativity.
This was certainly the case for James, as he not only became one of electronica's
brilliant stars, but the contract with Warp gave James the financial independence
to create to his heart's content.
A more important transit
in terms of James's own creativity occurred in the middle portion of the nineties,
when Pluto conjoined James's natal Jupiter-Neptune conjunction and opposed
his natal Saturn. Pluto's nearly three-year transit coincided with James's
most fertile and intensely creative period, climaxing in the release of his
"Selected Ambient Works Volume II," which many critics believe to
be the magnum opus of the genre. Pluto intensified, deepened, and rarefied
the Saturn-Neptune-Jupiter constellation in James's chart.
Pluto transits have
the reputation of having the greatest and most transformative impact on
our lives because these transits make manifest–more than any other archetype–
the potentials in our chart. In the case of James, it was as if the Neptunian
waters of the collective unconscious were lifted out of his psyche and
made very, very perceptible and tangible. Not only this, but Pluto also
intensified the push-pull dialectic that Jupiter and Saturn have on James's
natal Neptune. Many tracks are bright, airy and inspiring--Jupiter•Neptune--while
other tracks are dark and depressing--Saturn•Neptune.
Every track on Selected
Ambient Works Volume II upholds this "Plutonic" intensity. This is ambient
music at its most visionary, its most otherworldly, its most surreal,
and its most dimensionally rich and layered. Many critics have commented
upon the music's ability to conjure up whole, unchartered universes in
a listener's imagination, and certainly, Pluto and Neptune in conjunction
are apt to create new worlds.
Music on Selected Ambient Works Volume II ranges
from the angelic and rapturously transcendent to hellishly tortured–Pluto
was at work intensifying the already powerful forced communion of Neptune,
Saturn, and Jupiter in James's birthchart. Listen to "SAW II track
1" (mp3) (real
audio) as an example of sonic bliss. On the converse "SAW
II track
(real
audio), unleashes eons of repressed purgatorial and hellbound
fury.
As James funnels
through his Saturn Return, it will be intriguing to see if he sustains
the abundance of brilliance he was able to give the world of electronica
throughout the past decade...or maybe he will simply enjoy more of his
time driving his tank around London.
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