ARC: Rise (2010)

Following a concert presented on the occasion of the The Gatherings Concert Series in Saint Mary's church, Philadelphia, Arc offered an intimate concert in the heart of the night of Sunday, November 15th on the air of WXPN radio, for the electronic and ambient nights of the Star’s End Radio Show. Completely improvised and played between 2 am and 3 am, Ian Boddy and Mark Shreeve investigated the tortuous meanders of the insomnia on 3 long tracks where dream and fear are intimately linked.
Creep is a long morphic breeze where senses are held on alert with a somber atonal movement tormented by corrosive and metallic sounds. A slow night-procession that begins with a linear phase where are adding soft caustic laments which clear among fanciful gongs, gaily-coloured pulsations and a soft fluty mellotron, vestige of a sleep which is slows to come. The insomnia persists and scents of metal on metal perfume this oblong agony of an absent sleep, with a strange funeral march that converges towards an abyssal universe. Breezes of surreal flutes and mystic choirs are interwoven with a mystic erosion which hesitates between the hazards of a night owl schizophrenia or a black dark poetry where shouts of creatures of a last night on earth are astray in the intro of Rise, there where the rhythm wakes up as if by magic on a sequential movement which begins as a leaf falls of a tree. Afterward, Rise takes an oscillator sequenced tempo in a fury of minimalism doubloons. Sequences on sequences, on course of events as unexpected as its fractured tempo, Rise accentuates the rhythm on the echo of its sequenced strikes, while felted and slamming percussions permute the rhythmic dimension. The more Rise progresses, the more it develops a multidirectional sequential approach accompanied by a synth which fuses good solos and a mellotron to heavy skin-tight hazes. Rise is a superb movement that is not without reminding the rhythmical approach of Free System Projekt on Impulse and a great track in the pure avant-gardism Berlin School style, with all the fury that Arc accustomed us over the years. I think in particular of Corrosion on Blaze and Friction on Fracture.
Fade concludes with a ghostly approach where a big organ hatches a prismatic breeze which goes astray in the depths of night already disturbed by the infernal Rise. A heterogeneous sonorous world pushes the limits of Fade in the spheres of a grand sounding schizo, whereas the atonal movement progresses under immense metalized strata. Quite slowly, Fade hits back at its spectral intro to embrace a soft mellotron which sings the night, which chants the pacifism night owl. A peaceful finale, soothing with light caustic jolts, a little as when we kiss a sleep which is slow to comes up.
Rise is the least violent works of Arc. It is an album for the night, splendidly improvised and which inspires the phases of nebulosity agitated by the musical precepts of Boddy / Shreeve duet. A somber music with mephistophelic reflections which burst of a beautiful sequential fury to return back wandering in limbo and night-meanders that a neurotic tries to tame to finally fall asleep. Level-headed Arc of which Rise itself worth the price of its download. One can quite seizes the range with this short video available on You Tube;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N415OfRXd7Y

Sylvain Lupari
Cet article est disponible en Français sur le site de Guts of Darkness, dont je suis chroniqueur sous le nom de Phaedream; http://www.gutsofdarkness.com/god/objet.php?objet=12920