Synth&Sequences

VANDERSON: Visions (2011)

2012-02-28T16:18:00.000-05:00

"Visions is a splendid return in time..."
1 Vision Part I 10:54
2 Powerminers 8:18
3 Vision Part II 12:43
4 Vision Part III 13:30

GENERATOR.PL: GEN CD 022

Vanderson is part of this invasion of Polish musicians who embellish the EM scene for the biggest pleasure of our ears. Influenced by Berlin School, both vintage and new, Maciej Wierzchowski composes a music which oscillates constantly between these two universes, caressing sometimes the cosmic meanders and its tones so metallic as heterogeneous established by Jarre, at least on Visions, in conformity with what would be completely suited to call today; the Poland School style. Visions is his 7th work and his very first on the label of his native land; Generator Pl. An album which will please undoubtedly the fans of old good Berlin School.
Sounds of gongs cross the ages, resounding among fine cosmic streaks and its winds which blow to scatter a cosmic silence. Fine sequences drum. Their delicate and feverish palpitations draw the souvenirs of a distant musical world furnished by the art of Klaus Schulze to modulate silk rhythms. A soft celestial flute covers this fragile poetic tempo which quietly goes towards an atmospheric passage where solitary chords roam among the singings of crickets and threatening reverberations. We are a little after the 6th minute and "Vision Part I" escapes with sequences which skip with more ardour. Sequences to crisscrossed strikes which intertwine in the doubloons of their hasty succession, moulding these nervous and hypnotic rhythmic which made the delights of vintage Berlin School of the Schulze's years that Maciej Wierzchowski sprays with copious synth solos and heterogeneous electronic tones. This rhythm at the same time soft and nervous fed the skeleton of "Powerminers" which begins with drops falling from a cave walls. Slow synthesized waves sunk into violined stratas are rocking there, waiting for these sequences with a soft chaotic and repetitive pace which team up to fine percussions while the exhilarating minimalist rhythm of "Powerminers" flows under a thick cloud of cosmic tones and soft flutes which sing under pleasant orchestral arrangements. Very musical, "Powerminers" ends its lyrical journey in the jingles of an intra-ground station and its trains which fit into each other, a little as in the universe of Jean Michel Jarre and his Magnetic Fields.
These tones of trains continue beyond "Vision Part II" whose rhythm is drummed by sequences to arrhythmic pulsations which spawn in the shade of discreet reverberations. Clouds of mist cover this rhythm which accelerates subtly its pace, while cymbals and percussions are framing a soft semi frenzied ascent which binds itself in percussions to tones of anvils wrapped in wadding to burst in a heavy and boosted ambiance. A very electronic ambiance filled by fragrances of Tangerine Dream and Air Sculpture with furious synth solos. The intro of "Vision Part III" reminds me a lot of the essays of Adelbert Von Deyen on his very beautiful Atmospheres (1980). The mood is as well poetic as cosmic with its clouds of spatial dusts which enfold the warm winds of lyrical synths. This is superb vintage years cosmic Berlin School we are hearing here with all this panoply of analog electronic tones which become entangled in a perfect atmospheric symbiosis. We feel a life inside these organic instabilities which implode of an oniric slowness, waiting for the smallest space of freedom to explode of a progressive rhythm. And the opening occurs a little before the 5th minute with sequences which alternate in a perfect symmetry, drawing a rhythm limping on cyclic and crisscrossed chords which waddle by following the movement of a more harmonious synth line. This hypnotic rhythm set by carillons and reverberations hangs on to wonderful solos which enlace and coil on a minimalist tangent a bit evolutive.
I adored Vanderson's Visions. It’s a splendid return in time when vintage Berlin School had this capacity to seduce with its soft minimalist sequences which fed long hypnotic movements where the modifications in structures were as perceptible as a blinking of lash. Evolutive rhythms which were of use as assizes to long and languishing synth solos or musical canvas to atmospheric sound paintings where the imagination rocked our dreams and transcends our fantasies. It’s very beautiful and too short! And this gives me the taste to go off to explore the world of Vanderson.

Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14936

* You can also watch nice videos with extracts of Visions on YouTube with these links:

Vision Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr94lBklFvk

Vision Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhhibbbCM4I

SOLAR FIELDS: Until We Meet The Sky (2011)

2012-02-25T18:35:00.000-05:00

"Until We Meet The Sky is a subjugating work which will seize you from the first listening"

1 From the Next End 9:18
2 Broken Radio Echo 3:55
3 Singing Machine 6:55
4 After Midnight, They Speak 3:40
5 When the Worlds Collide 6:33
6 Dialogue with a River 10:06
7 Forgotten 3:15
8 Night Traffic City 9:53
9 Sombrero 5:45
10 Last Step in Vacuum 9:11
11 Until We Meet the Sky 5:01
12 Epilogue 5:15

ULTIMAE RECORDS: INRE-053

Solar Fields is the musical project of the Swedish synthesist and sound designer Magnus Birgersson. Since 2001, with the release of Reflective Frequencies, Birgersson built himself a solid reputation, while bringing together an increasing number of fans, in the spheres of psychotronic ambient EM. Until We Meet The Sky is his last musical project. It’s a strangely fascinating album which saw its first ideas germinated during the 2011Australian mini-tour. Ideas which expanded much further and took a more musical shape during a subsequent journey in the icy territories of Ireland. These two contrasts of continents depict marvellously the universe of disparity which surrounds this 10th opus of Solar Fields where the sometimes apocalyptic atmospheres cross superb angelic arias on spheres of influence fed by free and undisciplined metallic electrons which hang their threatening shadows in a universe stigmatized by metallic waves. Iridescent waves which smother and surround fragmented and isolated tempos, eat away by melodious approaches as melancholic as meditative. Until We Meet The Sky listens to it as a long astral procession with phases which are crescend and are tighten into astral nothingness proper to Magnus Birgersson's imagination. And that's the reason why he wanted to approached it as a long and unique track, a project that he cherished for a very long time, that he cut into 12 phases which get tangled in a somber musical set where the tempos and melodies born and die from their ashes.
The influences of both continents embrace each other in a filiform synth wave which surrounds the silence. Somber oscillations are emerging there, feeding the discreet pulsatory circles of "From the Next End" which swirls with the delicacy of shadows among choirs and their whispers of intergalactic paranoia, murmuring in a fauna of white noises. A fine down-tempo adopts the pace of the weak oscillatory perception of an intro condemned by a thick fog. Swirling with a mesmerizing lasciviousness, it insufflates a parallel life to "From the Next End" which receives the rhythmic offering by freeing well here and there some crystal clear notes, but without ever giving way to the slender possibility of exploding, not only for a single moment. With its notes of piano roaming in an atmosphere of gloom, "Broken Radio Echo" espouses a very melancholic approach. A little as to contemplate the ruins of a city which breathes hardly under a fine acid rain. This movement of apocalyptic greyness continues beyond "Singing Machine" and its plaintive synth layers which overhang an intro calcified by an injection of carbonic fluids. It also precedes a subtle crescendo which cuts the debate ambiance/rhythm, with a fusion of percussions and pulsations which resound like a hypnotic tribal trance of which the echo of the strikings harmonizes with a synthesis of choruses and iridescent stratas to wind around a thick cloud of eclectic tones, highlighting the notes of a piano forgotten in the bitter vapours. Rustles, gases in fusion and tones of metal in mourning cover the very somber and atonal "After Midnight, They Speak", of which the misled piano notes of "Broken Radio Echo" accompany the cracklings of another galaxy. Cracklings which throw themselves into the intro of "When the Worlds Collide" and its fine bass line of which the deaf undulations awake synth stratas which adopt the same forms. Forms with UFO’s tones which exhilarate and catch the interest to plunge in a delicious down-tempo of which the hesitating rhythm is flooded in a bath of video game tones. Terrific the rhythm of "When the Worlds Collide" tergiversates between the sensualism of Massive Attack (Mezzanine) and the one of Gary Numan's robots, swallowers of orgasms. Everything is eclectic and metallic, except the feelings which go against reason of a title at the appearance so cold but which hides so much emotionalism. It’s a big favourite which takes refuge within the limpidity of the twinkling chords of "Dialogue with a River" and its delicate intro where the reflections of the sun on a river feign a bed of sparkling arpeggios with the innocence of its purity. A big droning cloud perturbs this tranquility, modifying the axis of serenity which hangs over "Dialogue with a River" which falls for a short, loud and spasmodic rhythm built on curt percussions of which the strikings bruise the auras of the howling elfs.
A slow prelude to the superb "Night Traffic City", "Forgotten" pursues this promenade under the bridges of a city in ruin where we hear a downpour crackled among the resonances of a multitude of hoops of which the echo is fading into an anonymous synth wave which leads towards a brief indecisive rhythm. And it’s in its drizzle that the sloppy rhythm of "Night Traffic City" is waving, fitting to the fine pulsations/percussions and melodious chords of a keyboard to hybrid tones. The melody is beautiful and catchy. The rhythm is sunk into vaporous ambiances with felted cymbals and this fusion of metallic percussions/pulsations which sound like radioactive gases. And the flow is of an oscillating strength of 3.5, 5 being the maximum of the zombiesc trance debility. But there is always this ambivalence in the rhythms and harmonious fluids which makes everything fleeting, fragmented or in constant evolution. And it’s Until We Meet The Sky's pattern. Magnus Birgersson is using each hidden recess and every possible moment to create a diversion and give a new direction to each of his titles. So the rhythm of "Night Traffic City" goes under a long tunnel and loses its transmissions which gradually get back with a powerful crescendo; angelic choirs, flickering cymbals, heavy bass and lines of a dramatic synth. The whole clears up while the rhythmic structure espouses a new tangent, in conformity with the entire dimension of the bipolarity of rhythms and melodies which teem within the heart of Until We Meet The Sky. It’s a great track! "Sombrero" plunges us into very dark ambiances with its chords of piano and keyboard which resound in the nothingness, before making us startle by falling with strength in a rhythm as unexpected than sharp. The floating hoops of "Last Step in Vacuum" incite us to join Morpheus’ arms. A delicate rhythm forges up through an angelic mist. Wooden percussions pierce the suave celestial violins, awakening an echoing tempo which is arching on good pulsatory percussions and drawing the lines of a stunning futuristic melody which is lulling between 2 universes. Angelic choirs wrap this tempo, preventing any leak of this stunning crescendo as much deeply moving than disconcerting. Because what follows will remain engraved in your ears for a very long time. "Last Step in Vacuum" is the long and delicious harmonious prelude which collects every available note to feed our feelings and kink our soul in the heavy rhythm and the surreal melody of the title track. If we haven’t the shivers of our emotions, if we don’t force back a tear and if we don’t switch off the candlestick of our torments by feeling the percussions hammering the beatings of our pulsations and by hearing the spectres roar with pain and desolation on a rhythm heavy, lascivious and so much harmonic of "Until We Meet the Sky" which crumbles beneath the weight of heart-rending streaks, it’s because that we already are in the Sky. Moreover, the winds of ether and metal which talk on a contradictory way on "Epilogue" are there to remind it to us.
Until We Meet The Sky is a subjugating work which will seize you from the first listening. Perplex and meditative, Solar Fields weaves an inexhaustible sound imagination where tones explode from everywhere, surrounding rhythms and ambiances prisoners of a fascinating poetry from a parallel universe. The snippets of melodies which roam here and there, hanging on to rhythms which born and fade in moods of apocalyptic ruins, are the equivalent of the works of a poet in search of light. It’s another jewel from the Lyon label Ultimae Records ; a label which doesn’t stop amazing me, both by the quality of its works and by their artistic presentations. This label found the means to merge the electronic art. To merge the ambient and techno by presenting cataclysmic works which jostle the current of EM. Exactly like Until We Meet The Sky jostles all structures with a remarkable work which breathes of a new kind of ambient life. Hat to you Magnus Birgersson!

* If you want to know a bit more about the sound world of Solar Fields, you can visit his website here: http://www.solarfields.com/

RUDZ & KOMENDAREK: Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep (2011)

2012-02-22T17:44:00.000-05:00

"Here's a powerful album difficult to tame but swarming of bipolar rhythms"1 Standing on the Shoulders of Giants 5:26
2 Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep 15:59
3 Reminiscences From Beyond Infinity 24:04
a) Atavistic Throwback
b) Playing Dice with God
c) Immersed In a Marsch of Grey Matter
d) Another Dawn of Man
4 Lonely Spirits over the Post-Megalopolis Badland 16:58
5 Interrupted Stream of Consciousness 10:46
GENERATOR.PL: GEN CD 023
The sleep is a fascinating universe. It’s a world which belongs to us but of which we don’t control the destinies and where we slide quietly towards the semi-comatose phases, there where the beauties cross the horrors and the peace of mind feed the torments. It’s inspired by this universe without borders that Przemyslaw Rudz dipped the tips of his fingers to forge the beginnings of Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep. Those who are familiar with the works of Przemyslaw Rudz know what to expect from the brilliant composer and the Polish oasis cosmic sculptor. But that would be the fruit of a collaboration with Wladyslaw Komendarek? Keyboardist from vintage psychedelic rock prog band Exodus and pioneer of the Polish electronic scene since 1985, Wladyslaw Komendarek is a character so much disproportionate as original who multiplies any sorts of experiments within his musical evolution. Knowing already that the albums of Przemyslaw Rudz are rich in related tones, what would bring the contribution of Komendarek? Built at remotely, Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep is a brilliant album swarming of bipolar rhythms which depicts with fascination the various phases of sleep. Phases put in music with a superb musical direction, designed by Rudz, and by stunning cerebral settings, imagined by Komendarek.
"Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" open the doors of dullness with a soft morphic melody prisoner of a vacillating movement of which the contractions slip in a universe of eclectic and electronic tones. Piano notes emerge from this cerebral oblivion, strumming a linear rhythm which is surrounded streaks and solos of a synth which switches around its delicacy for the loudness and bites of a howling guitar. The first steps towards the unexplored secrets of the dreams continue with the title-track and its long intro populated by a collage of musical samplings as much heterogeneous as dreams can weave unsuited landscapes. A galloping sequential movement pierces this veil of indefinite tones, awakening a delicious wave which waddles innocently. After more than 6 minutes of the ghostly knocks or the vague steps, discordant beatings and panting, resounding church bells, moves of spectral waves and electric winds; "Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep" gets out of its somnambulistic torpor with a deaf rhythm which amplifies its progression with beautiful élans of keyboards and fluttering synth stratas which caress a wild rhythmic ride fed by the fire of good percussions and boiling psychotronic keyboard keys. "Reminiscences From Beyond Infinity" is the heart of the sleep’s anguishes. It’s a long epic title of 24 minutes divided into 4 parts. Divided between its ambient, meditative, rhythmic and furious phases, "Reminiscences From Beyond Infinity" begins in the tears of Dominik Chmurski's solitary violin which lulls the morphic choirs of its intro (Atavistic Throwback) with superb tearful stratas. Stratas which cry in a world of apocalyptic metal. The tone is lugubrious and we are absorbed by a world of coldness with knocks of horrible cymbals which crumble the hearing and by the movements of rolling drums which make roar the moon while slowly we slide towards Playing Dice with God. This 2nd part of "Reminiscences From Beyond Infinity" is filled by rhythms of electronic rock à la Tangerine Dream era 220 Volts, guitars less although the impression to hear riffs in there remains vague. The percussions are wild and unbridled. They are supported by stormy sequences of which the crisscrossed exchanges get lost in the knocks of drum while synth solos are powerful and cover this lively rhythm of a strange mood of free-jazz. This rhythm dissolves at about the 11th minute, embracing a more lunar phase. It’s a beautiful moment of thoughtful poetry where the synth whistles a delicate lullaby on the back of fine waves to frail undulations. An isolated sequence flutters its rhythmic elytrons, such as a cadenced threat, awakening a vocoder which mumbles the psalms of a schizophrenic misled on the top of a crowned mountain contemplating a world in gestation. It’s in this long delirium filled of quirky tones that the last phase of "Reminiscences From Beyond Infinity" sets in motion. We hear tom-toms resound and the confuse ambiances. Tinkled keys cut the debate between the abstract and the concrete, reviving these synths perfumed by Tangerine Dream reminiscences of, introducing again a curt and nervous rhythm. A circular rhythm sat over unbridled percussions and sequences which try to fit to this tempo while the synth solos are watering abundantly the rhythmic frenzy with superb audacious musical figures. What a way to end this track!
After this stormy raid in the bipolar rhythms, "Lonely Spirits over the Post-Megalopolis Badland" offers a long introduction of serenity. The ambience is very cosmic with strongly ambient synth layers which float lazily among choirs which breathe the morphic quietness among dusts of stars and notes of a discreet guitar played by Jarek Figura. The rhythm is boiling slightly a little after the 8th minute. Gyratory, it bends itself on a fusion of pulsations and guitar riffs, being of use as ramparts for sumptuous synth solos which are supported by clouds of choruses. This rhythm is fading away, getting lost in somehow indecisive and a bit spasmodic guitar notes which try to resuscitate a rhythmic phase hidden in the Neuronium vapours of ethers. "Interrupted Stream of Consciousness" ends this fascinating essay of the lifelessness universe and its phantasmagorical meanders with fine palpitations which drill an indefinable hubbub and its colourful tones. As everywhere in Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep the progressive rhythm gets disguise in a sound fauna to thousand hallucinating brightness. The bass of Maciek Warda molds a groovy tempo which hems under the plaintive spectres of a progressive rhythm and strata of an organ in the old tones of the Exodus years. And "Interrupted Stream of Consciousness" explodes of a cosmico-rock-psycho-progressive rhythm with a funky bass, a speaking keyboard, hybrid synth layers and a guitar with furious loops which harmonize their priorities on good percussions, converging on an evolutionary tempo which will break dryly on the cliffs of the incomprehensibility, the dumb witness of the originality and the anarchy of the harmonious fluids which separate Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep from the dream and its complexities at the evolutionary stage of the sleep, disrupted by such a provocative album.
You will have guessed that Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep is not for all ears. It’s a powerful album swarming with bipolar rhythms where the disproportionate imagination of Wladyslaw Komendarek finds his apotheosis in an impressive pattern of sound effects. The music is beautiful. Puzzling, it’s split by evolutionary directions which suit strongly well the conception that we can have of the evolutionary phases of the sleep. In brief, Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep carries marvellously the boldness of its title and its project. It’s an album that we taste at the tips of our ears and once we have both ears filled by, we just can’t give up it
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14919
* You can watch a promo video of Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep by following this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU7gaW2V_r4

INDRA: Parallel Time (1993/2011)

2012-02-21T07:27:00.000-05:00

"Parallel Time is a pearl!"

1 Prophet 31:32
2 Sphinx 30:52
3 The Twins (Bonus Track) 17:29

EAGLE MUSIC: EMCD 028/2011

Some curt and edgy chords waltz with a metalized cohesion on the glaucous breaths of heavy and sinuous iridescent reverberations. Melted in a sound universe where the silvery tones get lost in the breaths of agonizing metals, the intro of "Prophet" drags us into Indra's odd and abstract sound world. We are hearing well these synths sculpted the winds of Orient. As we are hearing these poetic winds and these orchestral arrangements transported lunatic chords which only ask to form a coherent musical chain, but Indra decided to move away from his usual approach to offer a more audacious album. An album that he considers as more difficult to tame.
It’s after having attended to The Primeval Beauty theatre play that Indra had the idea to composed an album where the abstract mood would go alongside to the ambivalent and latent rhythms. After 2 first albums inspired by the Berlin School style, the Rumanian synthesist wanted to undertake a more audacious musical journey and Parallel Time is a whole one. "Prophet" is the most experimental of Parallel Time's original 2 tracks. It’s a long abstract musical painting where a panoply of interrupted tones, broken chords and isolated orchestrations vacillate and float in a musical universe divided between the cerebral anarchy and its fleeting evolutionary rhythms. The ambiance is surrealism with its melodies bits and pieces drowned in a musical anarchy made of heterogeneous tones and metallic breaths. In spite of its length (31:32) one can say that "Prophet" is drawing out in abstract redundancy because Indra gets our attention and feeds the imagination with harmonious insertions which go astray and come back under other forms in this long musical babel. Divided between pure stillness, some subtle sequenced momentums which wave on a sea of agitated tones and wandering choirs as well as some avalanches of scattered percussions "Prophet" pursues its long road to mislaid harmonies, falling sometimes into bitter eclectic moments and getting up again on other times for short harmonious moments; witness of the constant duality that Indra wants to impose on his 3rd work.
Sharply more musical and more inspired by The Primeval Beauty, "Sphinx" is simply wonderful. It’s a long hypnotic title which is strongly impregnated by the influences of Berlin School with a meditative progressive rhythm hammered by incise percussions of which the strikings sometimes metalized resound in the mist of Hinduisms' fragrances. A synth with honeyed winds of the Middle East opens the intro. A rich intro where the paradisiacal breaths are wrapped by crisscrossed synth stratas. Stratas which drop its choirs and its limpid tones of crystal. This mesmerizing movement of morphic waltz stretches its elytrons of desires beyond the first beatings of percussions, rooting the sensualism of an intro which does not stop merging in the strange lasciviousness of a movement which nevertheless goes on the borders of perdition. A little before the 8th minute the percussions fall with more heaviness and vigour, masking a bit the tones of suave flutes which emerge from the synths and giving so a second life to "Sphinx". A life imprinted by a sensual and cerebral magnetism. Wandering choirs smell the limping rhythm. It’s a slow and heavy rhythm, as a hypnotic groovy, which skips with a mixture of percussions and metallic jingles. Indra adds to it some splendid and attractive synth layers with tones as much striking as surprising which whip up the senses and calm the heaviness of the strikings of percussions of which the hypnotic pounding oversizes its dodecaphonic approach. And so "Sphinx" goes on and displays its 30 minutes as a slow cerebral trance where the rhythm is of use as pretext to a musical painting to thousand eclectic breaths and where the magic of Indra settles its first real daring ramifications which will serve the versatility of the Rumanian synth-spirit through his many works to come. This title is a pure marvel of electronic minimalist music.
Written15 years later, in 2007, "The Twins" is a bonus track included with this new rerelease of Parallel Time. And this is another jewel that Indra pulls out of his synths! It’s a pure delight of minimalist fascination which begins with tinkled chords which skip and collide with the sweetness of the oniric tenderness. One recognizes the sound of Indra. His delicacy and his kind of level-headed hesitation, signature of sweetness and sensibility get by knocks of life, which shapes a fine rhythmic slightly jerky. And the music is gorgeous! A wonderful romance where the chords and keys flutter with delicacy and harmony, changing the course of their melody on a rhythmic axis subtly permutating. The movement is of an innocent candor and all in harmony with those series of twinkling chords which hop in filiform lines and which crisscross in various melodious approaches, forging a ball of unfinished melodies which are complementing each other in the abstraction of its parallel lines, from where the link with Parallel Time. And when we tell ourselves ‘‘Shit, that it’s beautiful!’’, it’s becomes even nicer with its orchestral arrangements which pulls out a smile of the soul. Smiles that Indra is pulling out of me since moons already!
Parallel Time is a pearl! If "Prophet" can murdered your ears with its approach as eclectic as experimental, "Sphinx" and "The Twins" are two inescapable in the musical world of Indra and even the world of EM. Audacious, Indra laids the foundations for a style that he will polish up with more refinement in his subsequent works, I think in particular of the very beautiful Echo in Time released in 1998, and which will become the seal of this brilliant synthesist and music writer.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14916
* If you want to know a bit more about the sound world of Indra, you can visit his website here: http://www.indramusic.ro/

IAN BODDY: Strange Attractors (2012)

2012-02-19T08:45:00.000-05:00

"Strange Attractors is a real tour de force which shows all of Ian Boddy's dexterity..."

1 Amongst Dark Clouds 9:50
2 Parabolic Excursions 10:40
3 Crossing the Range 15:17
4 Strange Attractors 17:34
5 Return Vector 14:52
6 Trip the Light Fandango 7:11

DiN: DDL012

Established as an indisputable leader in EM since his very first steps in 1980, Ian Boddy is as the good wine, in the exception that his overconsumption does not put to sleep nor intoxicates the senses but overexcites the delight caused by a wonderful electronic vine. Year after year and album after album, the English synthesist knew how to develop an artistic approach where his ambiances as much ethereal as cosmic and so much chthonian than eclectic were grafted in rhythms knit by subtle removable and evolutionary phases of which the permutations pass by powerful synth momentums or skilful sequenced ascents, giving to his EM an extrovert approach which transcends the walls of an abstract culture. If one would like to seize Ian Boddy's career in a single album, Strange Attractors would be the ideal springboard. It’s a powerful and intense album where synths weave dark and elusive ambiances which split up and tear away on the cliffs of rhythms, hungry for and fond of these moments of perdition unique to the moods of glaucous poetry which encircles the universes of the founder of DiN label.
Recorded in concert within the framework of the Awakenings EM Concerts in April2011, Strange Attractors is the 12th work available in a downloadable format on DiN Digital Download platform. Presented in a nice artwork with attractive graphics and a series of pictures from the concert, the album begins by a deep spatial immersion. A little as a filament leaving with resistance our cerebral aura, a fine synthesized wave ends up in the galactic depths to open "Amongst Dark Clouds". Only master on board, Ian Boddy multiplies the synth layers which coil in an impressive lunar waltz of which the orchestral momentums overfly the fine carillons which ring in an absolute oblivion. Intense and captivating, "Amongst Dark Clouds" wraps us of an aura of solitude from where are escaping discreet pulsations as well as metallic chords with random movements which jostle slightly the dark winds which switch into cosmic choruses. Fine sequences which sound like percussions of glasses dance freely at the opening of "Parabolic Excursions", chasing away the morphic vapours of "Amongst Dark Clouds". These sequences flutter and tinkle of an enchanting transparency, a little as in Eddie Jobson's universe and his fabulous Theme of Secrets, awakening the impulsions of a bass line of which the corrosive élans bite a static rhythm which is overhung by synth waves that sound so much like those of Martenot's. The movement is swirling. It follows a spheroidal tangent where cosmic mists and choirs unite their secret identities to embrace a hypnotic comfort while quietly the sequences drum again with the spectral waves of Martenot. It is in the acuteness breaths of "Parabolic Excursions" that begins the descent of "Crossing the Range". These oblong breaths move slowly such as sinuous sound arcs to adorn the abyssal depth which reigns over here and go astray in a subtle mixture of astral choirs. In full control of our cerebral mummification, Ian Boddy brings down some mechanical pulsations which surf on a cosmic mist, whereas the cymbals are moulding some floating tsitt-tsitt; prelude to a rhythm which becomes heavier, under the streaks and rustlings of a synth to spectral howlings. Between 2 two rhythmic phases and 2 unreal ambiances, "Crossing the Range" evolves with all of its ambiguity, caressing on the passage the chthonian mists and the progressive rhythms all in stamping on the jingles of the mechanical percussions which quiver in a smooth mellotron wadding. The finale explodes of a heavy circular rhythm à la Arc to be made turn pale the hells.
The title track chains up with a post- apocalyptic approach where threatening synth layers and sinuous caustic reverberations encircle various heavy resonant pulsations. It reigns over this "Strange Attractors" track a strange mood of a distress world of steel-making, a little à la Blade Runner, which calms down a little after the 8th minute to let a soft flute displays its celestial feelings which float bitterly in an iconoclastic world. It’s a short moment of appeasement where the winds of purity caress the latent distortions of a world of destruction which reborn of its ashes with its waves which twirl in a disastrous fury, letting the choirs and glaucous pulsations mixing up to a demonic arrhythmia up until the threshold of time. There where the flutes are pushing their last breaths, under the resonant curves of the sound arcs which throb in the isolation up to the doors of "Return Vector". After an intro where the dark winds scatter the Dantesque ruins of "Strange Attractors", the delicate drummed rhythm of "Return Vector" switches of direction towards heavy sequences which resound among crystalline ringing and caustic waves filled by cosmic resonances to converge on a rhythm built on a fluid and harmonic staggering. A rhythm sprinkled by delicious zest of groovy loops which coo over an ambiance filled by a deep chthonian flavour where the vestiges of Arc soak into the roots of Redshift with dark choruses which roam on a rhythmic structure subtly progressive. Hybrid, the synth frees a thick cloud of iridescent tones which scratch the fluidity of the rhythm while fusing short plaintive solos and splendid bewitching strata of which the vague spectral approaches hoot above the percussions to ringing of glasses which sparkle on a nest of pulsatory sequences. The musical ornament is terribly rich and intense. Ian Boddy looks like a real octopus with his hands which manoeuvre synths to sharp solos, with appealing mist (as much mephistophelic as cosmic) and dark choruses as well as sequencers to arrhythmic pulsations and rhythms structures to many forms. And finally these electronic percussions with random and undisciplined strikings supporting a rhythmic structure as much complex as hallucinating which ends in a wonderful blending of Arc/Boddy/Redshift . "Light the Trip Fandango" concludes straight off this concert. Slamming percussions encircle a sequential movement filled by multiple pulsations and wild percussions which sound like keys of a dactylo on the loose, while a keyboard draws fine harmonies with fluid keys which flutter around this wall of percussions and sequenced pulsations. Always in perfect symbiosis with its abstruse rhythms, the synth displays its bed of mist, its hybrid waves and its shrill solos, cementing "Light the Trip Fandango" in its role of an encore which closes a concert under the stars in a bubbling rhythm. A rhythm which gradually dies away in the fabulous and nostalgic Martenot waves. Those kinds of waves that make the whales sing on he cosmic corals.
Strange Attractors is a real tour de force which demonstrates all the dexterity of Ian Boddy to juggle with his panoply of instruments without losing the necessary concentration to shape an impressive musical world where the rhythms and the atmospheres are linked and overlap in a delicious cosmic cocktail. I would like being there and see this concert, only to see the strategy and the artistic architecture which inspired Ian Boddy to exceed the stage of improvisation to offer 6 solid titles where the emotion and intensity are the heart of a musical adventure which finally doesn’t really need eyes to be understood. Here’s an album which will introduce you easily into the fabulous sound world of Ian Boddy and which is available at the end of your fingers on the site of DiN: http://www.din.org.uk/din/node/422
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14912
* If you want to know a bit more about the sound world of Ian Boddy, you can visit his website here: http://www.din.org.uk/din/node/310

TMA: SynthsOrganics (2011)

2012-02-14T17:54:00.002-05:00

"SynthsOrganics is a rich album both in tones and in musicality..."

1 Modulus I 16:49
2 Ghost Whispers 8:16
3 Modulus II 13:35
4 Didge on the Ridge 12:02
5 Dreamland 6:45
6 Steve and the Art of Creating Friendship 6:17
7 Dan's Feeling 6:26
Syngate Records CD-R TA03

Torsten M. Abel is part of a core of unrecognized artists who through good times and bad enrich the cultural and musical universe of the underestimated Syngate label. A curious and multitalented artist born in Recklinghausen (Germany) in 1967, he was first interested in the synth-pop movement of the 80’s with the music of Gary Numan, Human League, John Foxx, and Thomas Dolby. It’s through this musical current that a friend introduced him to the world of sequences and hypnotic rhythms of Berlin School, by the music of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Ashra. And one thing leading to another and from synth to synth, Torsten Abel built his studio and composes his music. After a first album (Escape in 1993), the synthesist from the region of Ruhr takes a break and sell his equipment to concentrate on photography as a creative counterpart. At the same time he is always interested in the evolution of EM and the world of synthesizers. He slowly starts the creation of his own wall of modulars; a dream that he cherishes since he discovered the monsters of Klaus Schulze and Chris Franke, besides being active in the musical movement with the band Ambient Circle. It is moreover through this movement that he met Wolfgang Barkowski (Alien Nature) in 2008, a determining get-together which gave a 2nd élan to Torsten Abel with whom he collaborated for the realization of Medusa. Since then were released Sequentrips, in solo, and Hydra, with Alien Nature, in 2010.
SynthsOrganics is a more particular project which distances itself from purely electronic works of TMA and Alien Nature. It’s an audacious album where Torsten M. Abel mixes the tones of his synths and sequencers, as analog as digital, to tones of more conventional instruments instruments like guitars,played by Martin Rohleder who besides having helped TMA in the composition on 3tracks amazes by a superb guitar play which adds the same depth as Maxxess toPyramid Peak or Frank Dorittke to Ron Boots, percussions, didgeridoos and bullroarers. SynthsOrganics presents a surprising musical diversity where fragrances of jazz, clan trances and soft techno pierce hypnotic rhythms and melodic approaches arisen from this fusion of a retro Berlin School to the one of the digital years; Berlin School of the Innovative Communication years which saw the emergence of the key groups such as Software (Mergener / Weisser), Mind Over Matter and Robert Schroeder.
With its spiral sequential movement which zigzags among hoops of metallic resonances, "Modulus I" propose a very Berlin School introduction. Sequencer chords sparkle and flutter increasing and decreasing in minimalist lines, creating a hypnotic melodious rhythm which divides its flow by the addition of doubloons which collide in the cosmic clouds of a morphic synth. "Modulus I" becomes then source of charm with a soft synth which sings its solos on a rhythm fed by crisscrossed sequences. Timid, the percussions come to support these sequences which split the permutation of a static rhythm. And although it doesn’t seem like it, "Modulus I" leans on a rhythm become more refined and more complex, even if always so hypnotic and minimalist, with this dance of sequences which crisscross under superb synth solos played by Marcel Dude, recalling ceaselessly the wonderful musical universe from the hatching of the Innovative Communication label in the middle of the 80’s. Simply delicious! The sequential movement of "Ghost Whispers" borrows appreciably the same trajectory but with a weak nuance in the rhythmic flow. Slower and more lascivious, the rhythm swirls such as a soft soporific carousel. Frank Makowski sculpts some great soloing lamentations of a synth filled by Vangelis breezes which criss-cross a tide of celestial choruses of which certain whispers awaken a paranoia that sequences with delicate melodic volutes don’t stop feeding of an eternal lunar dance. It’s as much beautiful as it can be mesmerizing! "Modulus II" continues this exploration of those circular and hypnotic rhythms from the Software and Double Fantasy's years out of the IC label, where a spherical sequential movement swirls around cosmic sound elements and violins of galactic cathedrals. The intro teems with frayed serpentines which parade among sequences of which the beatings as much regular as timeless tick-tock scatter mists and cosmic choirs. Percussions bind to these sequences which undertake a slight movement of spiral, accentuating the pressure of a valsique rhythm which rushes into the furrows of an ascending tempo embellished by riffs of guitars. And it’s on a tempo build on an air on déjà heard that suave solos emerge. Sometimes from synths and sometimes from guitars, these solos run a rhythm that has these soft melodic reminiscences which call back these misfit years where Berlin School passed in transit through the analogue and the digital.
"Didge one the Ridge" begins another musical reflection of SynthsOrganics. After 3 long tracks where the majestic beauty of Berlin School was reflected through the very beautiful melodious approaches, the second portion of SynthsOrganics sets ablaze a bigger diversity as much rhythmical as musical. Although the basic idea was of use to SteveRoach's universe, the result remains not less very attractive here. After a slow intro where quirky breaths of didgeridoos and rhombuses, skilfully modulated by Jens Mechler, adorn a somber immaterial ambience, the strikings of percussions fall and resound in the hoarse reverberations of the clanic exhalations. The rhythm then becomes hard and pure with incisive hits of drums which fall with violence on an ambience stigmatized by a shamanic torpor. Synth layers which float and roam such as shy and hideous spectres caress the strength of those strikings which hammer a bewitching rhythm of tribal trance that solos of guitars water of splendid shrill élans. That’s a great track which reminds me a lot the era of The Leaving Time by SteveRoach and Michael Shrieve, back in 1984. "Dreamland" pursues the risky journey between harmonies and its tones of metals crystallized in a toothless crusher. Tones belch of pain, such as twisted metal sheets, to be gradually melted in the hypnotic melodic setting fed by guitar riffs and keyboard keys floating lightly, good edgy percussions and sequences a bit limpid which are use as rampart to good guitar solos and fluids hypnotic serpentines which flow with a harmonious ease conferring to "Dreamland" a melodic approach which is as much near the innocence as the harmfulness. "Steve and the Art of Creating Friendship" borrows a style closer to jazz-rock with solid drumming to nervous strikes whereas "Dan's Feeling" ends SynthsOrganics by a technoïd mood where metallic jingles, percussions, cymbals, banging and tsitt-tsitt eat away pulsations with funky-groovy gallops.
SynthsOrganics is a rich album, both in tones and in musicality, where crisscrossed sequences, curt and edgy percussions weave evolutionary rhythms which are coated by a beautiful fusion of soloing synths and guitars layers. The diversity of the genres insufflates a particular cachet to this album which sways mainly towards the influences of a Berlin School filled by the fragrances of the mid 80's. These years where the mythical Innovative Communication label saw new comers such as Software, Baffo Banfi, Double Fantasy, Mind Over Matter and others bring a new sound dimension to a music that imperatively needed a second breathe, which is exactly is SynthsOrganics.

* If you want to know more about the sound world of TMA, you can visit his website here: http://www.tma-music.com/indexenglish.html

VANGELIS: Sex Power (1970)

2012-02-01T22:17:00.000-05:00

"We have to to listen to Sex Power for what it is; a movie music"

1 Partie I (17:00)
Introduction 0:26
Movement One 3:15
Movement Two (Love Theme) 2:51
Movement Three 3:10
Movement Four 3:15
Movement Five 3:34
2 Partie II (17:27)
Movement Six 1:56
Movement Seven 8:12
Movement Eight 3:19
Movement Nine 1:31
Movement Ten 2:29

1969! We would believe that the musical universe of Vangelis sounds unfashionable. And if we listened to it! If we listened to all this musical incandescence which will be of used as the front door to the works unique at the musical signature of the Greek multi-instrumentalist. It’s in the end of 1969 that Vangelis, always member of Aphrodite’s Child, undertakes the writing of Sex Power; a soundtrack of Henri Chapier's movie which starred Jane Birkin. Who would suspect that Vangelis was going to begin a long collaboration with the cinematographic industry for decades to come? Built around a recurring melodic theme, Sex Power inhales the poetry of the innocence so characteristic to the complex post-war love stories from the French cinema. But Vangelis goes further by exploring dramatic somber territories which will be the cradle of its creative vision, because Sex Power is imprinted in the footprints of a contemporary Vangelis. Already, the composer of Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, China and other albums as much striking, infuses in his music its melodies and its torments that he mixes with a delicious bipolar approach. We sense inside Sex Power the elements which will guide the premices of the philharmonic, Greco-Roman, film and theatrical structures which will follow all along the career of this self-taught musician. Sex Power is more than a simple album. It’s the beginning of an incredible musical epic which should never have known an end.
Built in 2 long parts divided into several movements, Sex Power begins with echoing keyboards riffs which hiccup on twisted metallic waves. It’s a short intro which leads us to some kind of tribal African percussions which drum on a bed of twinkling arpeggios, notes of harps and oniric choir structures. There is a whole melodious structure fed by fluids orchestrations and nice piano notes which touch lightly musical tendencies as much Arabian as Asian. "Movement Two (Love Theme)" opens with notes of a nice acoustic guitar which try to compete with the hummings of a motorcycle. The melody is beautiful. She flows with a bit of nostalgia, like a story that we once lived, to ends abruptly in the acceleration noises of the motorbike, throwing the veil of Vangelis' harmonious paradoxes. "Movement Three" plunges us into a more psychedelic era à la Pink Floyd on Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun with gongs and Tablas percussions which maintain a mesmerizing rhythm of zombie on acid. "Movement Four" and "Movement Five" revisit the melodious portion of "Love Theme", without the motorcycle noises nor background voices. A harpsichord replaces the acoustic guitar which is more discreet and which is made companion of a superb melody overhung by an angelic voice which hums and murmurs as a wind of happiness. Small variations embellish the melodic envelope which follows its route along a beautiful piano on "Movement Five", by far the most beautiful music piece on Sex Power.
More experimental, the 2nd part of Sex Power begins with African tribal percussions. The rhythm is fluid and comes along with these arpeggios so faithful to the harmonious approaches of Vangelis. They roll and sparkle with such a fluidity that we can’t just ignore the musical prose that they are freeing. Bells ring and clanic flutes sculpture a melodious universe which will be reflected until the very first scetches of La Fete Sauvage. "Movement Seven" introduces us in the austere universe of Vangelis with percussions full of eclectic tones which resound among dark choirs to lethal intonations. It’s the Heaven and Hell embryo which is drawing there with a dark ambience where bells, grave percussions and cacophonous cymbals ravage the hearing around eerie choruses. The paradox between harmony and din is edifying. Still there we just can’t dislike this voice of angel which floats here and there as well as this dramatic intensity of those Gregorian drums and choruses. Variation on the same theme; "Movement Eight" is another version of the melodic theme of Sex Power. This time, organ and percussions are omnipresent and cover the melodic elements which quietly dress this melody. A little as a minimalist Oldfield works, spread over distanced segments. Short and odd, "Movement Nine" is fed by a mixture of hummings and jingles as much mechanical as industrial in whom is melting a soft celestial voice, while Vangelis concludes Sex Power with a strummed version of the "Love Theme", with a more shortened version of "Movement Five".
We have to to listen to Sex Power for what it is; a movie music with melodious passages to satisfy the poetic moments about love and more abstracted passages to feed the disturbing ambiguities of the power of imagination. If we approach Sex Power only for its music, we could be disappointed because we risk getting lost in its more experimental passages. See the movie can help but it is not a necessity so much the music of Vangelis speaks by itself. And it’s the big strength of the Greek composer; his skill to put in music the images and texts. And he also has this capacity to juggle with his melodies and his dramatic moments, digging ditches of feelings between love and discord, anger and passion. And it’s for these reasons that I consider Sex Power as a very charming album with a skilful mixture of melody along an exploratory and progressive music which is the first step of a colossal career. For a long time discontinued, Sex Power is again available in a version CD, including Symphonic Poem (Fais que ton Rêve soit plus Long que la Nuit), edited by a label situated in Monaco.

RON BOOTS: Ante Oculos (2011)

2012-01-31T20:09:00.000-05:00

"Ante Oculos is a wonderful opus where the whim goes alongside reality"

1 Ad Temporum Sidelines. 7:55
2 Xenophobes and Other Weirdos!! 7:37
3 Ante Oculos 15:38
4 Can we Predict ? Part I 11:15
5 Can we Predict ? Part II 11:55
6 The Sorrow Remains of Things that Past. 7:40
7 Sole Novum 5:42
GROOVE: GR-187

According to Mayas and Nostradamus prophecies, 2012 should be a year apocalyptic events which would signified he end of the world. Other groups, as much alarmist as philosophic, predict that 2012 would be a year of great climatic upheavals and transitions which will drag the world and its inhabitants towards a major awareness already undertaken in 2011. Immensely poetic and introspective, Ante Oculos rests in a very beautiful artwork to pastel colors where a fairy draws circles of life on an earth which seems virgin. Did Ron Boots lose hope? However his last opus is weaved in the veins of a universe which looks for itself and which is afraid. Always so musical, Ron Boots lays a very lyrical concept album where EM goes alongside to a progressive approach with a zest of melancholy and apprehension. Ante Oculos is a superb album with intense, moving and powerful passages where the reflection brushes the passion and which moves us closer to our values while questioning us about the future prospects of our planet.
Be on a boat and split the water with the purity of the winds. That’s the impression which rocks us when that limpid synth waves are crisscrossing beneath the lost notes of acoustic guitar. "Ad Temporum Sidelines." falls in the ear as a superb electroacoustic ballad where soft riffs of an acoustic six-strings scribble a sylvan melody under choirs of mist and arpeggios streaming with transparency, a little as a brook of diamonds singing in the furrows of an enchanted forest. And the soft rhythm amplifies its oniric sweetness with synth pads to tones of melodic organ, singing of a wounded voice the pains of an earth broken in the eclectic breaths of a synth filled by iridescent radiances. It’s a great and very touching track. More hard-hitting with a very good merger of echoing, metallic, banging and tones of cosmic gas percussions, "Xenophobes and Other Weirdos!!" flies on nice orchestral arrangements of which violin envelopes cross with harmony the keys of a keyboard adrift. Discreet the synth remains not less very effective with its morphic and spectral layers there which float and tight a movement as much slow as heavy. Particles of tinkled dusts ring and float among the dark choruses which blow on the electronic arcs of "Can we Predict? Part I". The ambience is heavy and lethal with powerful symphonic breaths of a synth à la Vangelis which hoots in a sound fauna filled of analog reminiscences. Dark and apocalyptic, "Can we Predict? Part I" waltzes in the void with heavy layers of synth to futuristic fragrances of which the multiple ions shine with a bluish iridescence and hold onto the dying breaths à la Blade Runner. It’s incredibly rich and so intense.
"Can we Predict? Part II" moves on with subtle riffs which hiccup under these heavy metallic breaths. The cymbals lug their tsitt-tsitt, awakening fine pulsations and shaking percussions which fall with an unconcern debonair. On a rhythm with funky- jazz tendencies, "Can we Predict? Part II " frees from its heavy hold to sway hips of a flexible rhythm fed by fine crystalline arpeggios which skip in a universe stuffed with hoops to resonances words. Some good twisted solos glide over this delicate rhythm which is metamorphosing at the approach of percussions to tones of metal and glass. Percussions which put back "Can we Predict? Part II" on its apocalyptic road with celestial choirs which sing under industrial reverberations and its synth layers, herald angel of a blackness which will recover the earth of an immense veil of regret. After this eschatological ode, "The Sorrow Remains of Things that Past." falls in the ear with the virgin freshness of the electronic ballads. Fine notes to tones of a medieval harp roll in loops, fixing the road for Frank Dorittke (F.D.Project) chiselled solos which sing in solitary, waiting for the arrival of the felted resonances percussions. Heavy and morphic the tempo is waltzing with more mordant when steadier percussions fall and pound this slow rhythm fed by harp riffs that only the imagination can indeed hear as well as arpeggios of which the tones of glasses cross hatched fluty breaths before being mislaid in the plaintive solos of F.D. Catchy and great! Like the reflections of the sun after an ash night, the first arpeggios of "Sole Novum" dance on beautiful orchestrations. The rhythm is alive, filled with optimist. Synth solos illuminate with cheerfulness and keyboard keys inhale the happiness, as a dance of innocent lovers without souvenirs, nor remorse and without malice at all. Like our ancestors!Over the years Ron Boots accustomed us to solid works and I have to admit that Ante Oculos is one step above. The Dutch synthesist weaves a very intense cinematographic musical universe where several styles become entangled in superb harmonies as much meditative as apocalyptic. I love those powerful symphonic momentums à la Blade Runner which feed "Can we Predict?" as well as this violin which cries among this torrents of percussions on the title-track. And what is to say about "Ad Temporum Sidelines." and "The Sorrow Remains of Things that Past."? Ante Oculos has no weakness and no dead spots. It’s a wonderful opus where the whim goes alongside reality and where the musicality has to envy nothing the originality.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14860

VANGELIS: Blade Runner (1994)

2012-01-29T16:42:00.000-05:00

"Blade Runner is to the world of musical sci-fi what Sergeant Pepper is for rock"

1 Main Titles 3:42
2 Blush Response 5:47
3 Wait For Me 5:27
4 Rachel's Song 4:46
5 Love Theme 4:56
6 One More Kiss, Dear 3:58
7 Blade Runner Blues 8:53
8 Memories of Green 5:05
9 Tales of the Future 4:46
10 Damask Rose 2:32
11 Blade Runner (End Titles) 4:40
12 Tears in Rain 3:00

Along several of my reviews, I mention Vangelis and his Blade Runner as a work of reference. But yet, there was no review of it on Synth & Sequences. Now the situation is corrected. So here is a translated version of a review that I wrote back in 2008 for the webzine Guts of Darkness. First of all, a little of history! It’s in 1982 that Ridley Scott's famous movie hit the theatres. For reasons always dark to this day, and in spite of the doggedness, the original soundboard was limited only to the movie version. The very first soundtrack to be bounced out of this picture was an orchestral adaptation strongly sanitized by The New American Orchestra. It was an album of barely 34 minutes which included only the melodious side of Vangelis work, while excluding all the dialogues and sound effects which enriched both the movie and its soundtrack. Despite the absence of a real soundtrack, this music of Vangelis was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 1983, pushing the bootleggers to multiply the pirate editions with various sound qualities that the fans tore away at a high price. Twelve years later the real soundtrack finally saw the light of day to hit our eardrums under the label of Warner.
The intro of "Main Titles" opens all the suppositions to the late marketing of this full of imagery version of Vangelis. The jingles of machines overhang a honeyed synth which takes a long time before shining. We hear the interrogation of Decker with a Replicant on a background of shadowed strata which hesitate between lifelessness and melody. And the more "Main Titles" progresses and the more we feel the synergy and the musical power of this galactic world to the ethnic multiplicities. Vangelis casts on Scott's movie a simply stunning sound atmosphere. The enigmatic ambiance and the interrogation continue on "Blush Response" which takes an Asian tendency on galactic background. Not really rhythmic, nor motionless, this static whirlwind is a real sound ant-hill with its metallic percussions and its dark waves which escape in loops. In this highly futuristic world, Vangelis weaves small melodious pearls as "Wait for Me" and its jazzy-lounge style or still the melancholic ode of "Rachel's Song" which plunges us into the territories of Opera Sauvage. After the very sensual and suggestive "Love Theme", "One More Kiss, Dear" profiles a style of the 30’s night clubs which is taking us literally out of the futuristic world of Blade Runner. The strength of this soundtrack is the easiness that has Vangelis to transfers his visions and feelings through various musical styles while respecting the futuristic reach of the movie. "Blade Runner Blues" is the perfect example. It’s a galactic blues where the melancholy and the suffering of a disrupted soul are hearing by an idle synth which filters lamentations worthy of the most inspired of the saxophonists. The soft piano and the gloomy mood of "Memories of Green", a title to tear up the eyelids, continues this dark atmospherical breakthrough which encircles the main lines of this work where man is at the search of his origins. That’s one of the beautiful moments in the movie as well as in this soundtrack. As enigmatic as eclectic "Tales of the Future" and "Damask Rose" plunge us into the robotics ethnic territories, just before the explosive "Blade Runner (End Title)" which hammers our eardrums with its big symphonic drums and its melodious synth adorned by numerous sound effects. "Tears in the Rain" ends with a wonderful heart-rending apocalyptic poem which seduces so much by its words than its soft poignant music which floats in the air and does brandish the hair as much as the spine.
To me, Blade Runner is to the world of musical sci-fi what Sergeant Pepper is for rock. It’s an outstanding musical experience where mixed emotions travel on various electronic musical styles. It’s a rich album swarming with ambiances and feelings which succeed to captivate as well as our imaginary of a future to be soon our’s. It’s a real masterpiece which will survive Vangelis' works and life.

Sylvain Lupari (2008)
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=10767

OLIVIER BRIAND: Transparences (2011)

2012-01-28T10:44:00.001-05:00

"To date, what I heard from Olivier Briand is very powerful"

1 Transparences (5:11)
2 Prophetic Steps (8:03)
3 Gladiators (8:29)
4 Dans le Temple du Graal (7:09)
5 KS Revival (18:39)
6 Fonik 707 (3:51)
7 Mortal Nightmare (10:32)
8 Cold Emotions (4:20)
9 Après L'Orage (7:21)
PATCHWORK MUSIC

I have already written it; the French EM conceals small hidden jewels and Olivier Briand is one of them. Those who enjoyed his performance during the Nantes concert in August 2010, and which is at the origin of the SpaceFish Live Inexxa's DVD, will be delighted to find again the complex and progressive electronic structures of the synthesist from Nantes. Pulled of recordings not used during his concert at Carquefou in 1996, Transparences is a mixture of the kinds and influences which gnaw Olivier Briand. We can hear there some good reminiscences of Klaus Schulze (especially), Jean Michel Jarre (at the level of the rhythms) and Tangerine Dream (on a melodic level). In brief, a beautiful meshing of styles which become entangled in a sometimes claustrophobic but often melodic vision. A beautiful album of forgotten but unforgettable rests!
The title track begins with notes of an electro-acoustic guitar of which the bluesy soul roams under stars. Jean Jerez pinches his strings with pain and makes them resound among sinuous resounding lines which bite the fragility of their emotions while that quietly "Transparences" deviates towards a more nervous rhythm. A rhythm at the crossing of a cosmic free blues where chords of an undisciplined guitar fight arpeggios of a nervous synth that percussions support with a good steady tempo. The intro of "Prophetic Steps" slides into the fiery rhythms à la Jarre where resonant metallic percussions and arpeggios of an iridescent coolness collide on a beautiful rhythmic stuffed by crystalline serpentines, robotic vocalizes and sequential momentums as dynamic as melodious. It’s very good. We would believe to hear a merger of Kraftwerk and Jean Michel Jarre. Although its intro is quite honeyed with its fluty breaths which float above an angelic mist and fly among jets of industrial gases, "Gladiators" falls into a furious electronic rock where Pascal Férré's electric guitar bites out and spits out incisive solos which throw their venom on spasmodic and stormy sequences. An infernal storm fills our ears with a din of steel before that the calm smoothes all the musical surface with a superb melodious approach packed of Tangerine Dream musical souvenirs, area of Legend and Underwater Sunlight. It’s another great track which allies easily complexity and melody. "In the Temple of Graal" is simply hallucinating! Philharmonic crisscrossed stratas open the intro, such as a Pharaonic ballet. Somber vocals are grafted to this enchanting dance of sands which is sucked up by a multitude of aspirators holes which siphon the waltzing envelopes under great drum rolls. Such as the claustrophobic and encephalographic world of Klaus Schulze, the voices multiply and become entangled with the synth violin stratas in a strange cerebral ballet which has immoderation only the limits of a fanciful imagination. It’s an incredible track which spits all its fright and depth at high volume.
"KS Revival" is a wonderful immersion into the digital years of Klaus Schulze and of his unchained glockenspiels area. The solos are juicy. They wrap with a repressed intensity the jerky movements of riffs and pads of a synth curt and incisive, while the percussions roll in loops under a structure of which the evolution brings us near a cosmos overturned by an undisciplined finale. A finale which repents in the short tranquility of a mislaid astral movement. "Fonik 707" is a short electronic ballad where twinkling arpeggios skip on a bed of slithery spectral strata. The line of bass is superbly musical quite as the finale which is carried away by an abrupt and stormy movement, witness of the conceptual and melodious divergences which liven up the creativity of Olivier Briand. Very dark and ambiguous, "Mortal Nightmare" caresses effectively the doors of an insomniac night where the nightmare navigates on the black waves of synth which are overlapping among iridescent and tinkled breaths as well as whispers of paranoia. "Cold Emotions" offers a hard and cold rhythmic with oscillations which caw, borrowing (taking) the colourful universes of Schulze and the Caribbean rhythms of Jarre. The synthesist of Nantes weaves a musical universe rich in tones by grafting unreal vocalizes, nervous riffs and echoing spins on a rhythm in permutation and its pulsations as heavy as hypnotic. Rainy drops and thunderclaps scatter under the minimalist breaths of a flute to the colors of a rainbow singing under the furtive keys of a romantic keyboard. The music of "Après L'Orage" bears poetically its musical prose with a delicate ballerina approach where arpeggios sparkle and float among an iridescent mist, envelopes of cellos from fantasies and this suave flute of a centaur of the cosmic dunes.
To date, what I heard from Olivier Briand is very powerful. His musical style full of abrupt movements and random rhythms where his melodies are caressing corridors soaked of a mesmerizing paranoia confers him a unique and very particular place and this as much as in the universe of EM ( I’m situating him on the same place as Remy) as in firmament of French school EM. With its steady and tortuous rhythms, its abstruse ambiances and its melodies as metallic as poetic, Tranpsarences navigates on a complex but rather accessible musical odyssey. It’s a very good album which is going to please to the fans of Klaus Schulze, Jean Michel Jarre(this is rather curious to hear these two names and styles to hobnob with) Tangerine Dream and Remy. It’s an album which is amply worth the money spent and Olivier Briand is definitely a name to discover in the universe of EM.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14847

TRIPLE S: Poles (2011)

2012-01-25T17:13:00.002-05:00

"A world of ice beneath a guitar on fire, Poles is a beautiful EM story which rides a more rock side"

1 Ninety Degrees South (11:09)
2 Erebus Ice Tongue Part I (7:10)
3 Erebus Ice Tongue Part II (6:22)
4 Shackleton Ice Shelf (5:56)
5 Mount Ellsworth (10:18)
6 Pole of Inaccessibility (16:32)
7 Aurora Borealis (7:12)
8 Arctic Finale (7:05)

PLEASURE SOUND MUSIC: CDPS06
To hear the cold moans and roars out and to feel its bite, its erosion and its explosions. This is all the atmospheric setting which surrounds this first album of Triple S. Formed by Erik Seifert, Max Schiefele and Josef Steinbuechel in 2011; Triple S concocted a concept album which describes the experiments and the wild lives on both poles and its extremes coldnesses with a music which is not at all the equal of the subject of their thesis. Poles is a beautiful album where electronic rock caresses the morphic sweetnesses of atmospheric approaches with a Maxxess in great shape who frees wildly his strings to sculptures riffs and solos which invade structures as oniric as quietly stormy.
A Siberian wind engraves frosty dunes, propelling particles of ices among solitary arpeggios which have the fragility of glass. Floating and melancholic, the intro of "Ninety Degrees South" sweeps the horizon with beautiful layers of synth which are resting on the ice floes of solitude, expiring hatched pantings which get lost in the crystal clear echo of the arpeggios of ice. Maxxess' guitar tears up this wintry tranquility. His scattered solos and echoing riffs light up fine percussions and awaken keys from lunar keyboards. Slowly the rhythm of "Ninety Degrees South" is rising with a delicate morphic approach, procrastinating between a floating tempo and its more percussive momentums just like the 7 other titles which dance and waltz on Poles. It’s a soft but firm rhythm which oscillates between a strong progressive rock and a cosmic rock where distorted riffs, lascivious solos and strong percussions with tones of metallic gases frame an eclectic sound fauna. After an intro where the crackling of ices converges towards twinkling tones, "Erebus Ice Tongue Part I" stumbles over a delicious electronic rock approach à la Code Indigo. A merger of acoustic and electric guitars floods our ears with a mixture of notes, riffs and solos as heavy as ethereal which interlace on a nest of twinkling chords. Sometimes heavy, sometimes fluid and slightly jerky, the rhythm remains catchy. Harpooned by slamming percussions à la Jarre and flavoured of delicious hesitating and melodious chords à la Tangerine Dream, area Underwater Sunlight, it continues its progression towards "Erebus Ice Tongue Part II" with soft angelic vocals, before looping the loop with a finale to ambiances as much richer and intense as the introduction. The intro of "Shackleton Ice Shelf" jumps with the noise of the icebergs which crash violently on ice floes, offering a show of lunar desolation returned with aptly by the laments of a forsaken guitar. Max Schiefele's solos are bursting out of emotivity and float with the violence of the winds, accompany by morphic synth layers. It’s of a very poetic icy serenity.
Fine percussions draw the delicate chipped rhythm of "Mount Ellsworth" which is surrounded by a very electronic aura. Floating into Software and Pyramid Peak's spheres, the rhythm is finely jerky and decorated by electronic streaks which overhang the knocks of felted percussions before folding the loin over the harmonious solos of Maxxess. Afterward the rhythmic approach becomes more complex, lining up melodic phases which tire oneself out on others more jerky where synths and choirs compete with a more accommodating guitar. Built a little on the same principle, "Pole of Inaccessibility" offers a beautiful intro slightly morphic where notes of acoustic guitar glide over some weak pulsations. Streaks as much ghostly than iridescents shake the atmosphere while heaviness settles down, paving the way to a progressive rhythm which becomes predominant around the 6th minute mark. Heavy and slow, the rhythm is lascivious and skimmed over by beautiful strata of a spectral synth which copulate with solos of a morphic guitar. A guitar which becomes more aggressive by freeing riffs which roll in loops, accelerating a pace of which the rhythm is skilfully surrounded by layers and choirs of a hypnotic synth. More atmospheric and more claustrophobic, "Aurora Borealis" is unfolding as being in a state of weightlessness. The guitar floats like the waltzing stratas of Erik Wollo, forging loops which get astray in riffs and heterogeneous tones. Howler winds open the angelic heavens of "Arctic Finale" which shines with its superb celestial intro. Torn between its powerful impromptu rhythms and its ethereal ambiances, "Arctic Finale" is divided by its heavy percussions which fall and its twinkling arpeggios which flutter on a beautiful circular movement. But the heavy and slow rhythm takes the lead. For a few seconds it rages of its symphonic drums to then find shelter in the calm of the morphic strata of an oniric guitar and the crystalline arpeggios of a solitary keyboard to still bend under the knocks of the big drums and embrace a philharmonic phase just before ending in the winds of the cold ice. This is a wonderful track!
A world of ice beneath a guitar of fire, Poles is a beautiful EM album which rides serenely a more rock approach. The presence of Maxxess and his guitars bury his two friends that I find rather discreet, but the result isn’t less very good; it stays a pretty good album. Except that I would have like that the synths and eclectic ambiances of Erik Seifert emerge as much as the guitars and riffs of Maxxess. I have the feeling to hear a Maxxess album written by Erik Seifert, because we cannot deny the poetic touch here of the German synthesist that we hear and feel all along Poles, an album which will please both fans of Mike Oldfield (The Song of Distant Earth), Code Indigo, Erik Wollo and Pyramid Peak. A good bunch of styles, we have to admit...
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14846
* You can also watch a video of Pole of Inaccessibility (Radio Edit) by following this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTflCX2Y64Y

ERIK SEIFERT: Core (2009)

2012-01-24T22:02:00.001-05:00

"Catchy rhythms in a sci-fi ambiance here's the result of CORE, the best melodious EM of 2009"

1 LHC (Large Hedron Collider) 12:44
2 ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) 9:16
3 ISOLDE (Isotope On-Line Detector) 11:27
4 AD (Antiproton Decelerator) 11:27
5 SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron) 9:32
6 ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) 11:37
7 Wunderwerk (Trancer Spacey Remix) 9:25
PLEASURE SOUND MUSIC: PSCD-6469-01

We listen to this new Erik Seifert's opus as a strange spatial journey. Mixing the soft melodious approaches of Vangelis to Jarre rhythms, while visiting the heterogeneous sound atmospheres of interstellar flights, CORE evolves as a long track segmented in 7 parts in a sonic flora fill by sci-fi scents. A bit as if we were aboard a space shuttle which floats slowly among the astral cloudiness, planets and stars. It’s a beautiful album builds around electronic rhythms which progress melodiously within Jean Michel Jarre territories.
An electric current sparkles on the opening of "LHC (Large Hedron Collider)" freeing a swarm of sound ions which floats in a cosmic mist, a little as a the inside of a spaceship in awakening mode. Everything is under the hold of gravity; from melancholic chords of a mislaid piano to metallic strata of a sleepy synth, we are in state of weightlessness or in an intersidereal oblivion. A soft twinkling sequence comes out of this astral void. It spins with the grace of a ballerina in a serene ambiance, where the piano’s forlorn keys accompany it shyly before that a latent tempo is pointing out. Around the 7th minute it bursts out on percussions slightly banging and a good wavy-like bass line which spits hybrid heaviness pulsations in a musical pattern where a tempered rhythm crosses an ambient but delicately musical phase on a synth fill with Arabic and waltzing layers. It’s a beautiful track bursting out of a spatial melancholy and which is melting softly to the noises of a space station gear. Following to the introductory protocol of "LHC (Large Hedron Collider)", "ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment)" releases itself from the mechanical influence with a suave tempo which undulates delicately on a subtly stroboscopic structure. Hyper delicious and extremely melodious, the synth frees beautiful languishing strata to melodies of people from the sands. In the middle point, the rhythm becomes then more mordant and jerky with delicately anvil approach pursuing its melodious destiny on more hammered percussions which inject a heavier tempo. The journey continues with "ISOLDE (Isotope On-Line Detector)" and its slow atmospheric evolution which depicts skillfully the movements and the everyday life of cosmonauts moved away from their homeland. It’s a very cosmic music piece where the synth displays its analog tones, among solos and synth melodies which shape a slow temporal waltz. "AD (Antiproton Decelerator)" continues the exploitation of "ISOLDE" galactic ambiances except that it’s heavier with its threatening synth streaks which scan the environment such a laser eye among choirs condemned to perpetual space. Around the 4th minute, the synth harmonizes solos which get lost under the notes of a pulsating bass and hits of well feed percussions, drawing a languishing rhythm in a sound universe rich in heterogeneous strikings. Strikings which encircle an insistent sequence coming out of nowhere and of which synth solos invade the rhythm and coo beneath the eye with the searching resonances. Here is another very well structured track. "SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron)" and "ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus)" are 2 tracks in the purest Jarre tradition, Calypso and Chronology areas. These are t tracks with amphibian moods which move on nervous rhythms, great juicy percussions and a hatched rotary sequence which gets lost, on short periods, towards more atmospheric passages. Let says that it rocks and that it tears the walls down. The dragonfly sequence of "Wunderwerk (Trancer Spacey Remix)" is a pure delight for the hearing. Arpeggios to charming jolts are crossing some slamming percussions of which the resonances throw us in the Moon Machine moods from Jean Michel Jarre. It’s another great track, built on a rhythmic structure slightly stroboscopic where the ambient rhythm embraces lazily a synth with fragrances of a solitary sax of which the breath is cut by an automat vocoder, before resuming its rhythmic of origin.
Catchy rhythms in a sci-fi ambiance, here is the result of Erik Seifert's 5th opus. It’s an album high in tones and in tight paces; worthy of a dance floor for fans of wriggling dance, where melancholy transcends the rhythmic simplicity. CORE is a must for fans of Jarre and Vangelis, Chronology and Direct areas. It’s the best melodious EM album of 2009.
Sylvain Lupari (2009)
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=12845
* If you want to know more about the sound world of Erik Seifert, you can visit his website (in German only) here: http://www.pleasuresound.de/musik/index.html

SBRIZZI FaBIO: Evangelum Secundum (2011)

2012-01-22T11:16:00.001-05:00

"Evangelum Secundum is dark and abstruse with dishevelled and moiré rhythmic structures"

1 Annuntiatio (4:14)
2 Bethlehem Anno Primo (8:04)
3 Jesus in Templo (11:26)
4 Canae Nuptiale (4:24)
5 Beatitudines (4:20)
6 Seminator (2:21)
7 Granum Senapi (2:20)
8 Qui Sine Peccato est Primum Lapiderm Mittat (4:11)
9 Lazarus Amicus Meus (3:02)
10 Qui Bibet hanc Aquam Nunquam Sitiet (11:16)
INDEPENDANT RELEASE
Here is another strange album to land in the EM cd racks. Except that Evangelum Secundum is more progressive and more experimental than electronic, even if completely made from synthesizers, sequencers and mellotrons. Sbrizzi FaBIO's last opus goes back in 2006 with the superb Comunicare, an album which demonstrated all the talent of composer and sounds sculptor of the Italian synth man. An album more theatrical than musical, more poetic than melodic where every title hides a dimension more claustrophobic than paradisiacal, The Second Evangelic is a somber album which is rather difficult to tame. The rhythms are there tortuous, uncoordinated and roam in any direction, framing unfinished melodies which die the in hermetic breaths of heavy mellotrons, builders of unbridgeable sound bulwarks with intense movements of violins and cellos which bury choirs to thousand intonations.
"Annuntiatio" begins with lugubrious synth layers which float such as the wings of old organs above the scattered strikings of wandering percussions. Without precise rhythm, the rhythm is in constant tugging against the heavy melodious approach of the monasterial synth layers which restrain as much the percussions as the scattered notes of guitars. This impression of rift between rhythms and harmonies is the cornerstone of Evangelum Secundum's complexity and continues on "Bethlehem Anno Primo" which flows with beautiful fluty winds singing under the knocks of a sequencer bass chords. The rhythm is heavy and a bit threatening. It waves lazily by following the course of sequences and hatched chords which shake the temples of the hearing with curt bangs, scattering to the four winds angelic choirs and bells. Dark winds ring carillons which awaken a soft angelic choir. The intro of "Jesus in Templo" livens up then of a fluid movement where sequences hammer a circular rhythm which espouses the whirling of the carillons. The atmosphere becomes dense and stifling with dark choruses which hum among momentums of fanciful strings which hatch the structure by brief hit of bows. "Jesus in Templo" sinks into a maze of uncoordinated rhythms and ambiances where mellotron and sequence are engaged the fight of the stigmatization under the stars of the carillons before stifling in this strange mixture of cellos and flutes of which the calcified lamentations roam among lost chords. A furtive sequence appears from the foggy limbos of "Canae Nuptiale" to run with the uncertain chords of an oniric synth. A beautiful dance of time follows with sequencer keys which surround the breaths of a dreamy synth, entailing "Canae Nuptiale" towards another disrupted rhythmic.
"Beatitudines" is a beautiful ambient melody where birdsongs are fitting marvellously to the ethereal movements of mellotron choirs and layers. Only drawback; the finale which is very abrupt. A phenomenon that we observe on too many titles on Evangelum Secundum. With their sequences which skip and crisscross under curt knocks of percussions "Seminator" and "Granum Senapi" are two short titles with rhythmic structures which are quite similar. Heavy and violent rhythms, full of retained which are bound in somber melodious approaches where beautiful synth layers flitter among the heavy strikings of the notes of piano which resound among electronic tones, violins and floating choruses. "Qui Sine Peccato is Primum Lapiderm Mittat" present a nice structure of which the progressive rhythm evolves in secret on a beautiful synthesized crescendo. The drums of slaves' galleys bear the weight of a synth which subdivides its tones, creating a theatrical melody with a zest of drama in it. With its lost breaths and its fake notes of a quixotic harp which ride a sequence with wide wave-like loops, "Lazarus Amicus Meus" is a beautiful electronic melody moulded in the glass and the breath of angels. The rhythm is delicate and the synths set free a soft ethereal aroma with a beautiful envelope of mist. "Qui Bibet hanc Aquam Nunquam Sitiet" embraces a more orchestral tangent with synths fill by symphonic breaths. Piano notes drag among those from guitars, while a strange rustle accompanies this slow processional agony. It is a long complex track eroded by dramatic and orchestral musical elements, uniting the Episcopal universes of Vangelis and the theatrical one of Jean Pierre Thanes where the rhythm gets lost in its reflection, depraving short and sweet melodies abandoned on the surface of remorse.
Closer to the Italian progressive movement than the usual electronic structures, Evangelum Secundum is a dark and abstruse album with dishevelled and moiré rhythmic structures. There is a stifling atmosphere in this album full by rhythms and melodies broken and scattered in a claustrophobic production. It results from it in a strange movie or theatre music which has the mesmerizing visceral depth of Goblin and its delicious Suspiria. It’s an album which is very difficult to tame and which can seem frustrating in the first listening because of these rhythms and scattered melodies. But if you have the bold to try something unusual and quite audacious, Evangelum Secundum will be as high as your waits. Just one remark to Sbrizzi; it would be nice to remix Evangelum Secundum cause the way most of tracks end is quite annoying. It’s like listening to MP3 on cheap format...But the rest is quite good!
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14836

23fish: Future? (2011)

2012-01-20T18:27:00.000-05:00

"Future is an album which addresses mostly to lovers of very avant-gardist music."

1 Esperando, esperando (19:29)
2 Debod (23:35)
3 La habitacion del nino loco (9:22)
4 Who are you (10:34)
5 Quarantine (6:16)

DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

Future is the 2nd collaboration between the synth man Javi Canovas and the guitarist David Parades. Following the artistic and psychedelic bases established on Unforgiven Machine, released in 2010, the Spanish duet weaves an album where the music and its melodies bends on superb sequential movements which are caught up by envelopes to tones as much iridescent than silvered. Future is the essence of David Parades who breathes life into a strong experimental influence, him who is a fan of free improvisation. Autopsy of an album as stranger as attractive.
A fine line of metal tears the silence to introduce the weak hummings of the intergalactic machines. Dipped into the steel of sibylline tones, the intro of "Esperando, esperando" floats in a universe of abstraction where the breaths of synth, sometimes shrill and sometimes pleasant, got lost in the ambiguity of the intersidereal mechanisms. Fine pulsations emerge from industrialized slums. They drum beneath streaks a bit spectral, awakening quietly a rhythm which is duped by metallic rumblings. And in a fine transition, the rhythm of "Esperando, esperando" is switching shape to fits into a more ethereal approach with agile sequences which gallop under a sky fill of twisted sounds before escaping on a harder rhythm. It’s a rhythm in constant progression fed by sequences with undisciplined oscillations which skip and explode in a mixed bag of tones as metallic as opaline, feeding the very experimental approach of Future which is also reflected in the intro of "Debod" with the voice of David Parades which roars through the layers of an electric Ukulele. The result is rather striking. We would believe to hear a Shaman with a timber of voice a bit cybernetic who preaches in a cosmos left by its stars. Delicate synth layers wrap this atonal prayer, bringing a stalk of utopian heat to an oniric blackness. This obligatory phase is a prelude of a 5 minutes length to a superb sequential movement which shyly takes shape before exploding of its chaotic impulsions. Under a sky streaked and scratched by the iridescent and morphic claws of a mixture of synth/guitar to tones as cutting as intimidating, the rhythm of "Debod" hiccups and fights in front of the repeated attacks from the vicious and thunderous stratas. Sequences get subdivided and multiplied, crisscrossing in a fiery rhythmic chassé croisé which goes on up until the dawn of the tranquillity. It’s a relentless fight of more than 10 minutes before the peace calms the ardour with a divided approach. An approach where the majestic of the synth breaths is perturbed by the notes and the metallic rustles of a too omnipresent guitar. "La habitación del niño loco" is a purely experimental title where scattered strummed melodies roam among cracklings and mislaid tones. We would say melodies of a fragmented carousel which roll in loop under the dumbfounded glances of curious onlookers witnesses of a spectacular derailment. The effect is of an imaginary realism, in particular with a quite dire finale. Always trapped in a maze of tones made of lead in fusion, the intro of "Who are You" has difficulty in breathing. Chipped stratas are grazing the sound surface while a sequence emerges and waddles with ardour on a linear tempo. The iconoclastic noises lead room to breaths of guitars and afterward to lost notes which resound on a sequence became more undulating. A sequence which is crossing another one. Faster and more incisive it subdivides a rhythm became more complex which runs at a brisk pace, trying to escape the bites of guitar. "Quarantine" ends this 2nd rather audacious adventure of 23fish with a beautiful and long strummed lament. It’s a beautiful and sober melody which clashes in this musical decoration worth of a factory basement that is Future.
Future is an album which addresses mostly to lovers of very avant-gardist music. If there are some nice sequential kick offs, the album is above all a pretext to deepen the experimental music in an electronic structure of a kind of progressive Berlin School. I quite enjoyed it, although my old eardrums grimaced, but I doubt that this album is within the reach of all ears. If the sequences of Javi Canovas are by moments explosive, David Parades' guitars are on the other hand corrosives, giving at times some superb music moments and on other times hard anti-music moments. To listen to at small doses and you will eventually like it …
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14835

['ramp] : return (2011)

2012-01-19T07:10:00.000-05:00

''Return is a powerful journey in the analog lands of EM ..."

1 - astral disaster 36:30
a) 122112 (2:47)
b) astral disaster (8:48)
c) unholy messiahs (3:41)
d) iniernal machines part one (6:30)
e) iniernal machines part two (8:21)
f) a new dawn (2:29) g) 122212 (3:54)
2 - return 38:04
a) Return (7:20)
b) radiocarbon part one (7:35)
c) beacon (4:44)
d) radiocarbon part two (8:24)
e) lighthouse (10:01)

As its title freely let suggest it, Return is a return to basics for ['ramp] with an album completely made from analog equipments. Only master aboard of his studio and his abyssal wings, Stephen Parsick weaves 2 long titles to similar structures where the abrasive and industrial ambiances blow in the neck of heavy, static and unbridled rhythms. astral disaster and return are 2 long titles of an average length of 37 minutes segmented in several parts which are entwining in 2 powerful musical patterns of smells of suffers and colors of steel. Two titles of a lead heaviness which let themselves caressed by ambiances as poetic as devilish and bombarded by rhythms as heavy as unbridled, Return embraces the blackness of Redshift, the tamed rhythms of Tangerine Dream and the illuminated cosmos of Jean Michel Jarre
Like an apocalyptic musical book, "122112" goes down from celestial bodies with a slow linear movement adorned by cosmic dusts which sparkle in an ambiance stuffed with atmospheric tones. Ambient noises, restrained impulsions, crystalline serpentines, scattered pulsations and dark breaths feed this intro which amplifies its Dantesque character to finally sink into the heavy implosions of "astral disaster" and of its angelic choruses immured in the entrails of a condemned landThe ambience is heavy and stigmatized by a scent of suffer made iridescent. The choirs murmur and their voices join to synth lines at once mephistophelic and poetic which float and which tear of their silvered tones the walls of an abyssal corridor in order to hide in the depths of immobilism. This opera of choirs sclerosed in time gets transpose into the limbos of the steel mill from "unholy messiahs" which, such as sunbeams after a torrent of carbonized drizzle, moderates the chthonian ambiances with a passage with the colors of rainbow, before that the anger of the gods thunders with "iniernal machines". "part one" opens the infernalities with deaf pulsations which drop their felted rustles among metallic cymbals and silvery breaths. A powerful sequence starts to activate. Its heavy resonant keys surround some more agile sequences which flutter in a delicious anarchy, shaping an unreal rhythm which is feeding of a sequential mishmash to forms and tones mixed. On an abstruse rhythm, "iniernal machines part one" continues its powerful and static devilish ride with heavy sequences to made Redshift goes pale. Sequences which stagger with the grace of an elephant on acid, up until the doors of its 2nd part, there where the ambiances toil to contain the ceaseless stream of the stormy sequences which cry out their right of destruction. Puny, the rhythm of "iniernal machines part two" shivers and bends under the weight of the thunderous sequences which resound and make trembles both the eardrums than the subterranean corridors and crash into an aggressive echo. The subdued choruses roam on this powerful stationary rhythm which little by little gets out of breath and takes refuge within the breaths of genesis of "a new dawn" and those more orchestral and more liberators of "122212".
The 2nd portion of Return is more musical and more melodious, caressing the rhythms and approaches of Tangerine Dream in the clogs of Redshift. The intro of "Return" slides in a beautiful musical panorama where sinuous waves caress the resonant curves of the biting reverberations. The chthonian choruses always have precedence. They breathe in gloomy mists. Blowing in horns, they clear particles and hoops of metal which tear the astral veils to make roar the intersidereal darkness and bring us to the first stammering of the deaf pulsations from "radiocarbon part one". Except that the rhythm carries away very early. Heavy and powerful, it strolls with hesitation before biting the spine of zombie’s choirs and skipping with strength and resonance in a structure of lead where the wandering choirs are caressing it curvatures. The rhythm is heavy, powerful and fluid. It’s flown over by synth solos as much strident as lyrical which become infatuated with an infernal passion to a rhythm of steel. A rhythm which evolves in fine permutations to be ennobling in the sweetnesses and the ethereal solos of "beacon" before spurt even more in "radiocarbon part two" which revives all the power of its first part. "lighthouse" concludes this apocalyptic journey into the blows of angelic and iridescent trumpets, looping the loop of Return with the Dantesque breaths of "astral to disaster".
Return is a powerful journey in the analog lands of an EM which fed the fantasies of the first fans of a music which transcends the borders of imagination. Stephen Parsick succeeds an incredible tour de force by sculpturing a music to thousand torments from completely analog equipment where the somber psychedelicosmic ambiances bind themselves in rhythms as heavy as powerful. Following to evolutive musical patterns where the passion whips up furious sequences sculptor of thunderous rhythms, Return is a real musical puzzle where every sound and every note fit into 2 wonderful electronic acts displaying all the genius and the know-how of the caustic man in black of EM.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14832

* If you want to know more about the dark musical world of ['ramp], here's a link to Stephen Parsick's website: http://www.parsick.com/

PYRAMID PEAK: 5VOR12 (2011)

2012-01-16T19:28:00.001-05:00

"God that feels good to listen to new Pyramid Peak!"

1 Dr. Blofeld Und Die Waldorf Schüler (15:24)
2 Tears of Joy (12:48)
3 Lichtermeer (29:20)
4 Random Event Reloaded (9:58)
5 5 Vor 12 (5:47)

PYRAMID PEAK: PP1118

A floating shadow escapes from a somber wave made of sinuous arcs to roam in a cosmos filled by crystalline tones. Breaths and lunar waves sweep the black horizon, caressing at the passage white noises which sparkle under the glances dumbfounded by the breaths of morphic synths. Such as glances from cosmic sea lighthouse, the spatial waves crisscross and make love in a soft whirlwind of the moon, filling the oblong spatial intro of "Dr Blofeld Und Die Waldorf Schüler" of a bewitching psychedelicosmic character. And a little before the 4th minute, we can hear the cracklings to shiver. They flee the threat of an echoing sequential approach and the percussions which fall with a nervous fright, guiding "Dr Blofeld Und Die Waldorf Schüler" towards the rhythms so characteristics of Pyramid Peak. Sequences subdivide their strikings and their tonal approaches, moulding a superb rhythmic approach where spasmodic and chipped momentums fall in a striking rhythmic pattern with percussions which leave no chance and choirs which are wrapping the fury of it unite their intensities to shape the captivating musical universe of Pyramid Peak. According to the guide of rhythms and melodies from the musical textbook of Pyramid Peak, "Dr Blofeld Und Die Waldorf Schüler" continues his ascension with melodious synth lines which sing and float over the curt and hammered rhythms, to run finally aground in the gaps of a finale without land.
If you still don’t know Pyramid Peak, or Axel Stupplich, "Dr Blofeld Und Die Waldorf Schüler" is the perfect comparable of what we would find on the first 7 opuses of the German group which makes since Atmosphere in 1998 a delicious EM allying ambiances, rhythms and melodies. And 5Vor12, an acronym depicting the habit of the trio to end any project on borderline (midnight minus five), is a good continuity in the career of the Peak. "Tears of Joy" proposes another floating intro where Max ''Maxxess'' Schiefele’s guitar sculptures abstracted territories with floating solos à la David Gilmour which cry and sing among vaporous waltzing and morphic synth layers. Out of tears and breaths the guitar calms down a bit before the 7th minute sot, leading "Tears of Joy" towards a rhythmic of steel where the strikings alternate with an icy surgical precision. Synth solos whistle and coo above this chaotic rhythm among which the percussions strikes and sequences shape a powerful break sequencing tempo. Recorded at the Bochum Planetarium concert in 2010, "Lichtermeer" begins with synth waves which enlace and rush into a musical nothingness with intensity. Some delicious nasal tones of the Middle East fragrances pierce this sound veil while that weak sequences try a shy rhythmic breakthrough. Crossed by iridescent sound arcs and rocked by dumb voices and angelic mists, the intro of "Lichtermeer" wakes up little by little to the timid palpitations which drive towards the deaf and echoing strikings of a lascivious rhythm. Tinted with felt, the percussions fall with the correctness of the hypnotic movements while sequences draw stroboscopic circles which turn with hesitation in an intense veil of mist and synth wave. Between its oniric rhythms and its ethereal ambiances, "Lichtermeer" evolves by phase; passing from floating to lascivious to fall in the heavy atmospheres of a cosmos fill by eclectic tones to end its crusade of sounds and ambiances in the rhythms and the melodies of the Peak style. "Random Event Reloaded" is a refreshed version of the Random Event title track released in 2000. The intro is encircled by synth solos which are entwining idly in a superb iridescent mist. The roarings come from far and they ooze of a cosmic passion which extends until the powerful alternating keys of a heavy sequencer. Then the keys get subdivided, crisscrossed and stamped on themselves, spreading out a rhythmic maze which increases with the arrival of another sequential line which pounds a rhythm of lead. And the last 5 minutes of "Random Event Reloaded" are a pure stylistic composition on the art of sequencing and electronic rhythm. It’s heavy, powerful, very catchy and it tears up the paint of the walls. Another title recorded during the Bochum Planetarium concert, "5vor12" is a nice electronic ballad which reminds me a lot the area of the Dream on White Eagle with a beautiful melodious sequencing pattern which sculptures a supple and fluid rhythm. Maxxess' guitar throws some good solos which bind themselves marvellously with those, more spectral, of synths.
God that feels good to listen to new Pyramid Peak I like the music of the Leverkusen trio, a town near Cologne, who does a good dosage of ambiances, as cosmic as abstract, and rhythms, as balanced as unbridled, with melodious approaches which always hang on to the pleasure of ears. 5VOR12 is a good album which contains all the ingredients to satisfy the fans of the Peak as well as to please those who like the electronic and Teutonic period of the Dream. When to those who like the heavy and black sequences of Ramp or Redshift, you will find your account with an approach however more accessible there.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14829

MICHAEL NEIL & GRAHAM GETTY: Retrochet III (2011)

2012-01-14T10:28:00.001-05:00

"Retrochet III seems to be a new step in the progression of Michael Neil and Graham Getty"

1 A Trip across the Marshes at Midnight (12:18)
2 Monolilith (10:09)
3 Flow (8:29)
4 Sky Racer (12:16)
5 Alienice (4:12)
6 Table Mountain (10:40)

There is a music, its story and its influences which we never get tired to listen to. The one from Tangerine Dream's Ricochet, Encore and Stratosfear was the spearhead of a musical movement then in full boiling with the addition of hard and powerful rhythms which shook the morphic and psychedelic envelopes of cosmic synth layers. A little as in an unfinished dream, the duet Michael Neil and Graham Getty forces time and its whims by pursuing the exploration of a fascinating musical territory that has no borders. Retrochet III is not only a suite of the superb musical series begun in 2010, but it’s also the proof that illusion has limits only what we do not want to see, nor to hear.
It‘s in a nice fusion of the hypnotic rhythms of Retrochet I and the more psychedelic ambiances of Vol. II that "A Trip across the Marshes at Midnight" kiss the musical fragrances of Stratosfear. Fine fluid sequences skip with delicacy in an intro stuffed with cracklings and metallic gases. Switching shapes into drummed strikings, these sequences shake the layers of a suave ethereal flute while the rhythm of "A Trip across the Marshes at Midnight" trades its lightness to embrace a heavier phase trapped in the slowness of waltzing envelopes where morphic mist and spectral flute awaken the reminiscences of a forgotten world. Navigating on fluid and progressive rhythms which crisscross under a sky multicoloured of strata as poetic as atmospheric, this first title of Retrochet III lays the foundations for an album where the astral melodies stick to structures which travel easily through ages. "Monolilith" runs away with a more incisive rhythmic approach. Michael Neil and Graham Getty search the missing links of Encore with heavy but fluid sequences which run at full speed in beautiful floating envelopes. Rolling between its reverberating lines and its chloroformic arcs, "Monolilith" follows a progressive rhythmic tangent with a fine variation in the power of its sequences which obey to the variable strength of a synth from which heavy hootings, ghostly streaks and iridescent mists set an explosive eclectic cocktail ablaze. After this explosive title, "Flow" flows into our ears with a wonderful poetic approach where sequences and pulsations crackle such as anaemic popcorns with the force of their restraints under the layers and mists of an oniric synth. It’s a floating and meditative title coming out of limbs and which is a superb mixture of Klaus Schulze (Blackdance and Picture Music) and Michael Stearns (Chronos).
Espousing this blend of ardour and restraint of "A Trip across the Marshes at Midnight", "Sky Racer" begins with an oscillating chaotic waltz before entering a sequential phase to wide ascending undulations. This repressed rhythm is wrapped in morphic spheres with a synth asleep by ethereal mist which frees iridescent lines, throwing a poetic paradox on a title which looks for the slightest desertic plots of land to set its rhythmic approach in fire. "Alienice" dips us into atmospheric and psychedelic ambiances with layers and waves of synth to tones as confuse as puzzling. It’s a short experimental title which precedes the jewel of Retrochet III; "Table Mountain". Superb sequences with bass and felted tones skip with grace in the opening of "Table Mountain". Like a magical ballet they form a stealthily dance which is crisscrossed by sequence line filled by more direct oscillations. This chassé-croisé sequenced is a tasty musical find which amazes and enthrals, but we ain’t heard all of it yet. A synth throws a melancholic veil of mist and a superb melodious approach, adding an indefinable beauty to this poetic approach which will delight the fans of Tomita and Philip Glass. It’s of a stunning beauty! And so "Table Mountain" continues its dance of winds with this wonderful mixture of innocent sequences lends to sacrifice themselves in the morphic layers of a poetic synth for the biggest pleasure of our ears. This is incredibly beautiful and I have the same shivers which caress my spinal column after the 12th listening.
Retrochet III seems to be a new step in the progression of Michael Neil and Graham Getty. Even if the duet soaks up by the delicious atmospheres of the Ricochet years, he explores more personal ways by offering compositions and structures which stray from reminiscences of this period from which the uncountable musical veins ask only to be exploited. And it is the strength of Retrochet III. More than a sequel which risks to be short of breath, Michael Neil and Graham Getty display their arsenals of melodic poetry to instil some great progressive electronic odes which have nothing to envy to their sources of genesis.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14827
* Available on MusicZeit

Ambrosia Selected by Fishimself (2011)

2012-01-10T19:59:00.000-05:00

"Ambrosia is the perfect door to discover the musical world of Ultimae label"

1 Sub Strata (Max Million & Gusk) 6:33
2 Light Tails (Miktek) 5:29
3 Distant Industries (One Arc Degree) 6:13
4 Principles of Gravity (Aes Dana) 7:28
5 Homo Imperceptibilis (Sygnals) 9:39
6 Sun Ritual (Sesen) 7:43
7 Hyades (Alpha Tek) 7:13
8 V.A.N.T.A. (Asura) 9:39
9 Why (Memphidos) 8:33
10 Ominous Ride (Miktek) 6:27

ULTIMAE RECORDS: INRE-049

The French label Ultimae is an equivalence of the English label DiN. As IanB oddy's label, Ultimae possesses a nice bunch of artists who shape a stunning EM of which the soft and lascivious rhythms are next to ambiances as cosmic as psychedelic. Ambrosia is a compilation mixed by Greek DJ Fishimself. Haris Papadimitriou loves a music without borders, neither rhythmic and nor ambient, where the down-tempos to numerous evolutionary phases reign in absolved masters in the psychotronic spheres of an ambient parallel universe. Ambrosia pours into our ears with the amazement of its versatility where 10 titles link together as in a long journey in the countries of ambivalent rhythms. So, welcome in the kingdom of the cerebral rhythmic sensuality. Welcome to the eclectic down-tempos of Ambrosia.
This superb meshing of styles begins with "Sub Strata" from Max Million and Gusk. The rhythm is soft and finely drawn by at once heavy and light percussions. Like in a sort of cosmic and astral down-tempo, the rhythm floats in an oniric structure where crystalline arpeggios, suave ethereal voice filets, morphic guitar notes and synth layers wrapped up in a static mist get enlacing on a rhythm with subtle permutations. Miktek's "Light Tails" adopts the same cosmic-astral approach with a floating and hopping tempo. The choirs are beautiful. They roam on a misty structure which is slightly stamped by good percussions. "Distant Industries" from One Arc Degree follows the dreamy ashes of "Light Tails" with a cosmic and psychedelic down-tempo which spreads its slow rhythm over heavy metallic percussions. The synth draws a melodious approach which floats at big knocks of undulatory arcs, bringing in its melodious trail an uncertain rhythm which appears closer to stars than dance floors and which tergiversates among the breaths of astral mermaids and whispers which awaken a soft paranoia. Aes Dana's "Principles of Gravity" offers a rhythmic approach divided between its pulsating and ambient passages. The rhythm is forged by percussions to varied forms and tones, offering echoing strikings and other ones to cosmic gases effects which are grafting to sequences pulsing in various paces and swirling in hypnotic stroboscopic carousels while the ambient passages are fed by subdued choirs and cosmic layers. A melodious oscillatory piano line opens "Sygnals" from Homo Imperceptibilis, by far my very favourite on Ambrosia. This delicate melodious approach falls in a heavy up-tempo kind rhythm which swirls with lasciviousness around a pleiad of keys weakened by a glass tone. Nice layers from a morphic synth caress this soft cosmic down-tempo which yakety-yak beneath the weight of a good stroboscopic approach. The 2nd part is delicious. The rhythm turns in slow motion, embraced by a soft synth to violin strings envelopes which float and sing under the hits of hypnotic percussions. Percussions which are divided into halves and multiply their strikings in a great symbiosis anarchy.
After an ambient intro where a rain of heterogeneous tones pours in the nothingness, "Sun Ritual" from Sesen wakes up slowly with a rhythmic approach trapped in its cosmic elements and movements. Alpha Tek's "Hyades" pursues the exploitation of dark and glaucous ambiances introduced by Sesen before hatching on a heavy down-tempo to melodic envelope slightly jerky. The percussions fall with the subjection of a tick-tock caught in a muddy rhythm which shivers under the shakings of fine hoops and good sound effects so much echoing than reverberating. A little as "Sun Ritual", "V.A.N.T.A". from Asura marinates in an ambient intro before copulating with a good progressive rhythm which hooks the ear instantly. It’s long title which caresses so varied styles such as dark ambient, psychotronic ambient and cosmic down-tempo to progress with an intense cinematographic approach. It’s kind of like a psychedelic ride fed by hatched pads and chords and coated by a beautiful melodious envelope with an aura as angelic as foggy. A cooing and wave-like synth line shifts shape into a beautiful and crystal clear sequenced approach to sing the sweetnesses of Memphidos' "Why" which swirls in a universe chewed by misread percussions. Between psycho drama and psychedelicosmic, "Why" overlaps ethereal ambiance and crushed rhythm on a bipolar structure where static and white tones are next to a beautiful melody which has difficulty in making inhale its crystalline sequences. "Ominous Ride" from Miktek concludes this journey of broken rhythms by a beautiful piece of music where the down-tempo breathes by fine sequences and nice piano notes radiating in a very cosmic atmosphere.
Ambrosia is the perfect door to discover the musical world and the ambivalent rhythms of the Ultimae label. If I savoured at big knocks of ears the sublime Interloper from Carbon Based Lifeforms, the pleasure was just as much with this delicious compilation which transcends the borders of an EM to fragrances of Berlin School to radiate of a sound universe so hard-hitting. With a master’s hand, Fishimself erects a strong opus on which the homogeneity moves us away from the typical compilations with a skilful dosage of lascivious and languishing rhythms in atmospheres so much ethereal than cosmic, giving birth to a compact album which has no weakness and no dead moments.

* If you want to know more about Ultimae Records, discover their artists and hear some MP3 snippets, you can visit their website here: http://www.ultimae.com/

DARSHA AMBIENT: Dream In Blue (2011)

2012-01-09T19:27:00.001-05:00

"Darshan Ambient dares an audacious bet by merging his dark and meditative ambiances to jazz"

1 Upon Reflection (5:49)
2 When will my Someday Come (4:14)
3 Mirage (4:49)
4 As you Were (5:39)
5 A Letter from Home (7:19)
6 Ghosts of Africa (4:05)
7 Silent Smile/Angelo's Song (3:39)
8 Sun Fade (6:06)
9 Waiting on a Dead Man's Horse (5:49)
10 Sahara Sun (5:52)
11 Dream in Blue (6:23)

LOTUSPIKE: LSM22

Although the music of Darshan Ambient is not inevitably what gets closer of most styles that I listen to, his works radiate of an attractive aura which we can explain with difficulty. It’s like a love at first sight that we can’t justify the nature but of which we can explain its reason. I was deeply seduced by his last album A Day Within Days , an album where the soft rhythms and the atmospheres at once rural and ethereal were close to pretty good elements of tenderness and melancholy. And Dream in Blue does not escape this poetic approach of Michael Allison. For his last opus Darshan Ambient visits the patriarchal lands of New Orleans. Its bayous and its spirits fill by the fragrances of a centenarian jazz which caress the soft sighs of a more romanced approach than a purely electronic one.
Fine floating strata introduce the intro of "Upon Reflection" which gets alive by guitar notes rolling in a soft spiral over a fusion of oniric layers, caressing at passage sober percussions which force a rhythm full of retained. The melody which goes out of it is beautiful. It frees delicate arpeggios which sing in our ears when the rhythm tumbles with a fury dictated by an approach of free jazz. Free percussions and a good bass with oblong and sinuous notes feed a rhythm which rolls in minimalist loops to bicker a lyrical envelope which dwells upon all along Dream in Blue. "When will my Someday Come" offers a jazzier musical envelope with nice breaths of trumpets which are melting into a blues’ soul guitar. Mixing skilfully his jazz influences with a more electronic approach Darshan Ambient sprinkles his compositions with mellotron choirs and mists, adding a particular dimension to Dream in Blue. We also observe this tendency on "Ghosts of Africa"."Mirage" is a good intriguing music piece which floats between ambient and a slow rhythm of the Bayous where some good mi spectral and mi oniric strata are complaining on the back of a bass from which the heavy oscillations soak into Patrick O'Hearn sensual and mysterious moods. "As You Were" pursues this incursion in the roots of the old jazz with a beautiful romance fed by a piano which makes dance its fine melodious notes around a bass and a guitar as much charming as dreamy. The rhythm is soft and soaks into the spheres of a soft Lounge bar mood decorated by fine layers of a foggy synth. Sometimes this fusion of jazzy rhythms with vaporous and dreamy synth layers awakens memories of Vangelis in Blade Runner.
"A Letter from Home" is my first very favourite. It’s a long ambient title forged in the ashes of melancholy where wrapping strata float and roam, surrounding a wonderful contemplative romance fed at knocks of notes from a nostalgic piano which goes in the soul with the beauty of its wandering. A fine fluty ode appears, caressing the sighs of glances and confirming the very great beauty of "A Letter from Home"."Silent Smile (Angelo’s Song)" is another pearl for soul. Solitary, poignant and intensely deep, the piano drops its pensive notes which are recovered by a superb synth fill by breaths of trumpets and violins strings. It’s another great track, such as the very somber and ambient "Waiting on a Dead Man's Horse" which is very near Brian Eno’s soils. A good melodious approach pierces the dark introductory veil of "Sun Fade". As the piano, the guitar is soft and pensive. It crosses its notes and releases its groaning strata in the curves of a nice bass and a synth with hatched pads. The essence of the Bayous comes from this rather cheerful title. With its fluty synth pads and guitar solos which shout and complain around free percussions, "Sahara Sun" is the most intense title of Dream in Blue. The melodious ascent is astonishing and the rhythm has to nothing envy to some great tracks of progressive rock. And the guitar is simply marvellous. We would believe to hear Steve Hackett s incisive solos. Navigating between an uncertain rhythmic approach, ethereal ambiances and contemplative melodies, "Dream in Blue" is no more and no less that a faithful musical portrait which crisscrosses this other very beautiful work from Darshan Ambient.
Once again I got subjugated by Darshan Ambient. Michael Allison dares an audacious bet by merging his dark and meditative ambiances to his influences of old jazz. And the result is rather surprising. From "Upon Reflection" to "Sahara Sun" while passing by "A Letter from Home", the beauty and emotion perspire out of this musical pattern to approaches as eclectic as poetic. Dream in Blue is a very beautiful opus which is addressing to those who like the music and not to lovers of abstract music. Musical and lyrical, it will be the companion your evenings of reading and your contemplative introductions towards your sleepless nights, abstraction made of "Sahara Sun" …

* You can watch a nice video of the title track here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6-YWP2850k

and of Mirage here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9yBfDI7XM&feature=related

JUSTIN VANDENBERG: Synthetic Memories (2011)

2012-01-07T19:19:00.000-05:00

"Synthetic Memories' beauty has of equal only its musical purity"
1 From Below (9:29)
2 When I Walk (4:08)
3 Synthetic Memories (13:06)
4 67 (8:17)
5 The Path (7:30)
6 Dusk (8:05)
7 Drops (5:16)
8 Cold Brightness (8:58)

SPOTTED PECCARY: SPM2011

Oh! This is a wonderful one. It’s a small marvel of contemplative music and a pure musical delight that Justin Vanderberg offers as his first opus on the Spotted Peccary label. Weaved on reflections and questionings of memories as well as their realities, Synthetic Memories is flowing as if by magic into our ears to touch the slightest hidden recesses of our soul. It’s a majestic musical adventure which breathes by our bewitchment all throughout its taming. Synthetic Memories exudes tranquility on 8 titles with rhythms and ambiances which become entangled in a stunning symbiosis where morphic and oniric layers flirt with fine sequenced momentums. This 2nd opus from Justin Vanderberg is a masterpiece of poetry without words and a splendid album of an incredible musical depth which will know how to captivate your hearing as much as your feelings.
Astral winds and rustles jostle elements of life to introduce the wonderful "From Below", a track written with Jon Jenkins. Clanic percussions à la Steve Roach make their tom-toms resound through these synth waves which seem to caress spiritual water-waves, while a hypnotic rhythm submerges our aura. Fine guitars chords dawdle in ethereal atmospheres, drawing thin loops which float and run on a rhythm set on pulsations and hammerings became louder and heavier. This rhythm faces the emotional amplitude of our soul, while crystal clear notes of piano leap out from the forgetting to forge a melody lost among the ancestral rhythms which dance in these morphic atmospheres, sculpting musical souvenirs as distant as the first works of Patrick O'Hearn and those, more desertic, of Steve Roach. Doubtless one of the most beautiful track of 2011, "From Below" is bursting with passion and emotivity to reach its paroxysm in a finale that capsizes our last expulsions of passion. "When I Walk" follows the angelic ashes of "From Below" with a beautiful melodious approach where the notes of piano run with drummed pulsations under the breaths of an iridescent synth which push its astral waves towards the intro of "Synthetic Memories". The title-track of Synthetic Memories is also its heart. The peak of emotions converges there to filter doubts which will go out on more moderate and more poetic titles. But for the moment, the longest title of Synthetic Memories awakens its sequenced pulsations from the iridescent claws of a morphic synth. They run and undulate with delicacy, espousing the curve of the sinuous waves which blow such as enslaved choirs, mixing marvellously the ethereal elements and drummed sequences in a musical canvas where the constant rhythm adopts the tranquility of ambient elements. Pulsating sequences may be proud oneself on other pulsations more heterogeneous, metallic and cawing that it’s not changing at all the mood of serenity which prevails throughout the soft rhythmic evolution of "Synthetic Memories".
Fine oscillations modify subtly the long journey of "67", a pure ode to serenity where we perceive the clear influence of Steve Roach on Justin Vanderberg's ambient movements. Fragile, crystal clear arpeggios tinkle punctually and follow the fine inflections which feed this oblong linear movement where suave floating lines undulate and get enlacing into beautiful and dark angelic breaths. These crystal clear arpeggios are the core of the morphic and sequenced melodies that we find in Synthetic Memories. They glitter and swirl with the grace of the winds on "The Path", another good subjecting title where sequences of glasses spin around fine drummed percussions and around heavy silvery winds. With its slow morphic but all the same rather musical phases, "Dusk" transports the dusts of its slow and dark winds towards the melodious peace of mind of "Drops" and its notes of piano which fall with a beautiful effect of canon in a curious cerebral carousel. A beautiful melody escapes from it. Playing on mathematical keys, it slips into our ears with a virgin innocence to continue its tinkled road towards the musical tremors, the dark and iridescent winds of "Cold Brightness", concretizing the subliminal beauty of this wonderful opus that is Synthetic Memories.
I know that I tend to become passionate sometimes and that my emotions a bit juvenile resurface when my ears cross a work of such sensitivity. If Synthetic Memories from Justin Vanderberg is not typical of heavy sequenced works, the fact remains that its beauty has of equal only its musical purity. With its skilful dosage of oniric rhythms and celestial ambiances, Synthetic Memories will jostle your emotions. Doubtless the most beautiful musical work of 2011, Synthetic Memories is an imperative which has to be in your record collection, and that no matter if we are followers of heavy or ambient Berlin School because it’s a perfect symbiosis of 2 these genres but with more depth and limpidity.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14820

TANGERINE DREAM: Mona Da Vinci (2011)

2012-01-05T17:18:00.001-05:00

"Mona Da Vinci is not as fade as it may sounds on first hearings"

1 Calumet 5:30
2 Morpheus' Light 10:44
3 Phantoms and Oracles (Guitar version) 6:28
4 Mona Da Vinci 7:08
5 In The Storm of Serenity 7:39
6 Hunting For Illusions 4:43

It took me some time before reviewing this last CupDisc from the gang of Edgar Froese. After 2 superb albums in The Island of the Fay and The Angel from the West Window, as well as a very good CupDisc (The Gate of Saturn), Mona Da Vinci fell me in the ears with the effect of a cold shower by a chilly weather. I found that Edgar goes round in circles by undoing his musical ties and by falling again in his moods of candy rock electronic of the Miramar years. But with some additional listenings, I noticed that Mona Da Vinci was hiding some nice musical pearls. Now, knowing that the fans of the Dream already hurled themselves on Mona Da Vinci, whom addresses this review? Bah … Maybe it could influence the choices of the thinkers of Eastgate during the selection of another compilation or another Booster!
Played for the first time during the concert of Manchester, "Calumet" begins with undulating pulsations à la Flashpoint. Echoing percussions and sequences pounding on two ways shape a rhythmic skeleton which collides against the stream on more sober keyboard riffs. Without breaking the walls and with a typical melodious approach in what Edgar Dream lays since moons, "Calumet" pours without getting noticed too much and depicts the atmosphere maybe too much calculated which reigns over Mona Da Vinci. I think in particular of the title track which is submerged by a ghostly aura. An aura of mystery which glides over a rhythmic structure going round and round. That doesn’t mean that it’s not good, it’s just that it’s too familiar and that we already heard it so many times in the late TD years. Noticed that its progression ("Mona Da Vinci'') is all the same rather appealing. The longer title on this last Tangerine Froese's CupDisc, "Morpheus ' Light" is simply wonderful. Of long and suave angelic breaths cast a little bit of dark breezes on an intro which progresses such as a slow crescendo on a nest of percussions and sequences typical to the bipolar rhythms of the Dream. Edgar weaves a super melodious theme subdivided by resonant sequences and riffs which fall on other sequences pounding frenziedly under the breaths and winds of a poetic synth. It’s a splendid track where sequences strum a motionless rhythm. A rhythm trapped in a superb musical fauna which sounds so much like good old TD. Outstanding! "Phantoms and Oracles (Guitar version)" is an alternate version of Midas Touch which appears on The Hollywood Years Vol. 2 in 1998. It’s a big electronic rock from the Rockoon years. Sequences and hopping percussions forge an unbridled rhythm and the electric guitar of Zlatko Perica spits furious and incisive solos. "In The Storm of Serenity" is a beautiful ballad introduced on a slow rhythm. Surrounded by heterogeneous tones, the percussions are stunning and fall with imagination while the guitar sculpts great languishing solos. This is a nice track which hooks the hearing instantly. "Hunting for Illusions" ends Mona Da Vinci with a hyper-unbridled rhythmic approach where heavy sequences, slamming percussions and a starving bass line build a heavy and stormy rhythm. Mysterious, the synth throws good dark veils and short soloing breaths giving to "Hunting for Illusions" a harmonious depth which harmonizes pleasantly to its furious pace.
It’s a good think that I had to listen Mona Da Vinci a bit more before doing a final review, because it’s not as fade as it may sounds on first hearings. In fact it’s an honest CupDisc which has its failures as well as its small favourites, and this over and above the fact that "Morpheus ' Light" is totally brilliant and a pearl lost in a boiling sea of rhythms as superficial as well polished up.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14819
* You can also view a video of a static photo sleeve of the title track here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PhxujOJ1-c

STEVE SMITH & THE TYLAS CYNDROME: Phoenix Arising (2011)

2012-01-03T20:42:00.001-05:00

"Solid, striking and tinted by a cinematographic romance, Phoenix Arising is a very nice surprise."

1 Spanish Storm 10:33
2 Somewhere out There 10:05
3 Clockwork Freries 7:00
4 Inner City 8:12
5 Instand Recognition 8:08
6 Anticipation Long Distance 8:02
7 Deep Depression 8:49
8 Phoenix Arising 8:45

GROOVE: GR-184
Steve Smith is the 2nd half of Volt, a duet from England who presents a heavy EM strongly influenced by Berlin School. With old friends; Alan Ford on guitars and Les Sims on drums, Steve Smith took time necessary to forge a stunning album filled by mesmerizing cinematographic ambiances. Navigating between the fiery rhythms of England School strongly influenced by Mark Shreeve and Redshift as well as the ambiances more ethereal Berlin School, Phoenix Arising explodes on progressive electronic rock structures while protecting jealously a very poetic approach on 8 titles to evolutions as complex as melodious.
A strong threatening wind blows on the introductory plains of "Spanish Storm", awakening powerful thunders which tear the opaqueness of the winds. Far off, we can hear an acoustic guitar drops its notes among rainy drops. A sinuous reverberating synth wave bears this very theatrical musical pattern, while the guitar draws a delicate Latin approach and that the rhythm of "Spanish Storm" wakes up little by little with fine Spanish tribal percussions which pound in the shade of Alan Ford's notes. The drum deepens this embryonic and motionless rhythmic approach which grows rich from a bed of gleaming sequences which hiccup of a shy jerky flow. A splendid mellotron blows the lines of an astral melody and the percussions fall. Embracing a delicious harmonious crescendo, the rhythm of "Spanish Storm" sits astride our imagination. Sometimes heavy and sometimes fluid, it rests in the hollow of a romantic acoustic guitar or explodes in the solos of a furious electric guitar, supported by powerful percussions, throbbing sequences and a good bass line. This mixture of explosive and balanced rhythms to ambiances as much cinematographic as ethereal feeds the evolutionary structures and the catchy melodies of the 8 titles which compose Phoenix Arising. Gleaming sequences abound on it. They open the door to "Somewhere out There" which shines within multiple sequential approaches. On a circular and ascending rhythm, they cross and weave an at once melodious and intriguing musical pattern, digging into the twilights of Redshift and Mark Shreeve. These influences are the heart of this nice album, as we would hear later on "Instand Recognition" and "Anticipation Long Distance". Sober, the guitars and synths pour fine solos and sculpture beautiful melodies which sing and hang to the various sequential approaches. According to this pattern of progressive and divided rhythmic structure, "Clockwork Freries" embraces the airs of an innocent bed song a bit malefic with interposed sequences which bounce delicately under the breaths of a slightly ghostly synth. Ambivalent, the rhythm runs on curt percussions strikings while a dreamy guitar frees soft solos à la Al DiMeola, allying a jazz rock to spectral moods.
Furious, "Inner City" adopts a little bit the powerful ride of a little finale of "Spanish Storm" with vigorous sequences which undulate keenly and solid percussions which hammer a heavy infernal pace. Delicious, the synth throws beautiful melodious lines which sound like spectral lamentations while the guitar speaks to us on an emphatic rhythm where gleaming sequences add a cadenced depth to more hued passages. It’s a heavy and powerful title and it rides such as an apocalyptic Western, quite as "Instand Recognition" which pounds on a fine spasmodic sequential approach where the synth melodies take the shapes of spectral lamentations. We easily guess here a strong Redshift influence. Whispers lost in a gay-coloured intro bring "Anticipation Long Distance" towards a beautiful melodious structure which is similar to the universe of Tangerine Dream's ballads. Hybrids, the sequences espouse fluty breaths or a strange unreel nursery rhyme while a very melodious synth drops beautiful melodious solos. The whole thing leans on a beautiful rhythmic structure where bass and percussions support soberly a melodious structure which deviates towards an apocalyptic finale, deserving of the universe of Mark Shreeve and his Legion album. Speaking of ballad, "Deep Depression" is a wonderful one. Everything stands on great music. The rhythm is slow and holds a very melancholic tuneful approach, a little as in David Wright's universe. The guitar is sublime. It floats above this dreamlike structure, freeing fine solos which dance and sing on keys in perdition. With its rhythm finely hatched and hesitating, "Deep Depression" evolves with the sadness of its naming to ends in a superb orchestral final where guitars solos whip mellotron choirs which embrace a heavy and slow rhythm before diving back into the echoing notes of a romantic piano. After a floating intro the slow sequences of "Phoenix Arising" wiggle nervously, drawing a hoping rhythm. Another sequential line, a bass one, joins this wriggling carousel, preparing another progressive rhythmic ride which ends in the breaths of a philharmonic synth and a guitar with sober solos.
Solid, striking and tinted by a cinematographic romance, Phoenix Arising from Steve Smith and the Tylas Cyndrome is a very nice surprise. On rhythms and ambiances in constant movement, Steve Smith weaves an impressive musical scenario where the bases of EM flirt with the heavinesses and the poetic approaches of the England School style and the sometimes complex and destabilizing structures that we find in a more progressive music. In brief, Phoenix Arising is an audacious bet where the genres merge with a stunning fluidity, a little as to open a door to a new style of EM. And this is not something that evident to do. Phoenix Arising is a charming favourite and a nice hat to Steve Smith.
Sylvain Lupari (2012)
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=14816

VARIOUS DiN: Index 02 (2005)

2011-12-30T19:44:00.002-05:00

''Index 02 is a great compilation which airs all the available styles on DiN''

As its title let it guesses, Index 02 is the 2nd compilation of the DiN label. Following the same rule as Index 01, Ian Boddy carefully chose, mixed and edited 2 titles from the 9 albums released on DiN after Index 01 (DiN10). It results from it a superb blend of styles which floods our ears with18 titles all so different which become entangled in an impressive musical canvas of 77 minutes. Making of Index 02 an edifying witness of what brews in the corridors of DiN!
Subsonic Experience and Präposition’s "Regained Paradise" opens the ball. The rhythm is heavy, fluid and incisive. It runs with fury on an intense and wild mixture of percussions and beneath a sky gaily-coloured by streaks and strata coming from guitars and/or synths which tear the musicality with powerful hootings. Markus Reuter and Ian Boddy’s "History" calms things down with an odd bed song of which arpeggios of glasses swirl besides fluttered percussions to a surprising spiral as colourful as melodious. Dbkaos’ "Hydrosphere" brings us within floating corridors where chthonian breaths roam among glaucous and supernatural ambiances. Following are Ian Boddy's cosmic waves of "Ecliptic" from the Chiasmata album. The rhythm is soft, to the limit very hypnotic, and is finely drummed inside a circle of crystalline arpeggios. A short introduction into the morphic spheres of "The Mystic" from Boddy’s Aurora album leads us to the tribal and intriguing rhythms of "Edge of Nowhere" from the duet Boddy / Rich. It’s very good title which mixes the subtlety of the soft clanic rhythms and the ethereal atmospheres of the Steve Roach's glaucous musical world. In the same stride, but with more vigour, dbkaos proposes a title as cheerful as experimental in "After the Migration". It’s the kind of track which asks that we investigate a little more this duet to very heterogeneous tones. "Arcturus" from Arc really doesn’t need presentation. But just in case, this is heavy and somber Berlin School in which Ian Boddy made a good editing with 2 tracks to antipodes of rhythms and ambiances.
The title track "Aurora" continues its astral surge with a wonderful divinatory melody, while the title track of Chiasmata shows a more aggressive Ian Boddy with good percussions which hammer a heavy and slow rhythm. A rhythm encircled by fine sequences which flutter in a beautiful harmonious pattern. Ian Boddy marinades skilfully the genres on Index 02, so the rhythm a bit funky and groovy of "This Life" from Reuter / Boddy’s Pure clashes from the morphic moods of "Tuning Out" from Boddy / Rich’s Outpost which really gets out of the clanic and floating territories of Steve Roach. The musical universe of Ian Boddy and Bernd Wöstheinrich is very coloured and set by spontaneous rhythms which skip and teem in beautiful synth layers. Stemming out of the Moiré album, "Moiré" and "Smash and Grab" are 2 titles for ears found of a parallel musicality and of which the attentive listening allows us to discern a stunning sound fauna. "Treasures of the World" makes us discover the other face of Präposition with an enchanting ambient rhythm where percussions prevail beneath superb synth layers filled by tones of old organs. It is simply delicious! It’s in the twilights of Blaze, the 2nd opus of Arc on DiN, which ends Index 02 with 2 titles to diapasons of their antipodes. If "Silent White Light" is dreamy and ambient, "Corrosion" drags its heaviness and its slow rhythm in the ashes of some good Redshift.
From glaucous to ethereal ambient while passing by heavy Berlin School and a more creative and a more progressive EM. Index 02 is a great compilation which airs all the available styles on DiN. There is for all tastes and styles which beneficiate of a good mixing and editing from Ian Boddy who which tangles all its rhythms and atmospheres with a master’s hand. A little as if Index 02 would have been the fruit of a single artist. And don’t forget; it’s free on Bandcamp
(http://dinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/index02-din20) until 01/01/2012. After that, you will have to pay and still, it will be a good investment!
Sylvain Lupari (2011)
Cet article est disponible en Françaissur le site de Guts of Darkness, dont je suis chroniqueur sous le nom dePhaedream: http://www.gutsofdarkness.com/god/objet.php?objet=14809
* Here is the link todownload it completely free: http://dinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/index02-din20
* You can findmore info, and the complete track listing, here:
http://www.din.org.uk/din/node/421

MAZMONETH: Music by Mirrors (2011)

2011-12-29T22:06:00.002-05:00

''Music by Mirrors is another nice find from DiN label''

1 The Vital Spark 2:53
2 Oil on Water 5:36
3 Diablo 7:44
4 Spooks 6:02
5 Smoke and Mirrors 5:20
6 De Molay 5:46
7 Kali's Day Off 6:49
8 Perfect Absolution 7:07
9 In Vitro 5:10
10 End Game 6:31
DiN 38

What a very nice surprise from DiN label! Mazmoneth is formed by Nigel Mullaney, whom we know for his collaboration with Ian Boddy in Dub Atomica, and Ray Sherwin, an accomplish musician who has played with Hawkwind and Ultravox’s Billy Curie. This duet to very eclectic musical tendencies concocted us another small musical marvel where ambient musical landscapes pour out their emotive amplitudes towards rhythms in constants evolutions. Delicious and decorated with a sound fauna as much hallucinating as diversified, Music by Mirrors navigates on suave and lascivious down-tempos which shift appearances with free jazz and groovy styles within moods as supernatural as ethereal.
"The Vital Spark" debauches Music by Mirrors with a heavy ambient approach. Strata of synth and guitars wind and float in long iridescent curls, diluting their heavinesses in the crystal clear sequential movement which opens "Oil on Water". Such as a Goblins’ dance, crystalline arpeggios are skipping and sparkle in a delicious ethereal spiral, waiting for the fine bites of a delicate bass line and caressing at passage some soft flute layers. Percussions fall at mid-point. They shape a smooth down-tempo where the whole thing flows as in a lascivious dance of time. These short structures in stunning permutation abound in Music by Mirrors. And "Diablo" is a perfect example. After a short intro with sonorities as intriguing as mesmerizing other limpid chords flutter underneath the echoes of abstruse percussions. The ambiance is splendid. Between ambient and down-tempo, the rhythm scrolls against the stream in an odd metallic approach where the percussions prevail of their scathing strikings and the chthonian winds blow on gleaming mirror keys which tergiversate between the strikings and the ambiances. It’s very good and it hooks your hearing for sure. There is a link to watch a video at the end of this review. Be sure to watch it. It's awesome! "Spooks" continues the stunning musical journey of Music by Mirrors with an intro which embraces the Amerindian tribal breaths before bifurcate towards a suave jazzy down-tempo. The flute of the First Nations weaves a surreal cerebral approach on a divided tempo of which groovy and free jazz aromas are quarrelling the scattered ethereal moods. The waltz of the split melodies continues with "Smoke and Mirrors" which offers a superb cinematographic ambiance.
"De Molay" is another powerful title. After a superb atmospheric intro, where synth and guitar strata ululate on the pulsations of a bass line, the heavy and iridescent rhythm of "De Molay" shakes its threatening ambiance to embrace a soft phase imprinted by melancholy. Rhythms and atmospheres are trading the lead, plunging "De Molay" (as many other titles as well) in a bipolar musical phase where glaucous atmospheres flirt with lascivious rhythms. Stick on the finale of "De Molay" finale, "Kali’s Day Off" flirts with the metallic guitars strata to take shelter in a strange and soft melodious approach where silvery tones cogitate on rhythms in progression. Rhythms which become blurred little by little, getting astray in the multi dimensionality of the wandering ambiances and its vaporous strata to reborn in a fusion of metal on harmonies. "Perfect Absolution" offers a beautiful rhythmic duality with an uncertain and quivering approach where riffs of guitar ride percussions a bit jazzy and encircle fine melodious sequences. Rhythms imprecise and in constant movements charm our ears, here and in "In Vitro" which sways between its flexible tempo and its crossbreed ambiance in a universe stuffed of synthetic cracklings with percussions to tones of an anvil coated in a cotton wool of free jazz style which tear away the skins of drums. "End Game" concludes Music by Mirrors with a more accessible melodious envelope and rhythmic structure where a lively beat, somehow jerky, pounds in an erratic way on a long silky structure. Some fine glass arpeggios float and sparkle in a soft ambiance of free jazz, ending "End Game" and Music by Mirrors with this audacious mixture of the genres and rhythms which made the delights of this great find which is this first opus offers to us by Nigel Mullaney and Ray Sherwin.
Sylvain Lupari (2011)
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=14806
* If you want to know more about Mazmoneth and hear music snippets, there is this link from DiN:http://www.din.org.uk/din/node/409
* Here is Mazmoneth website, where you can also watch a video of Perfect Absolution:
http://www.mazmoneth.com/
* You can also watch a video of Diablo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu9W0FQ5dAw

KLAUS SCHULZE: Timewind (1975)

2011-12-27T15:20:00.000-05:00

''Timewind shows a more mature Schulze on rhythms and sequences''

CD 1 (59:13)
1 Bayreuth Return 30:25
2 Wahnfried 1883 28:37
CD 2 (56:14)
1 Echoes of Time 38:42 (Bonus Track)
2 Solar Wind 12:35 (Bonus Track)
3 Windy Times 4:57 (Bonus Track)

We are in 1975; Pink Floyd pushes the delusions of progressive music by using a synthesized, atmospheric and floating approach with Wish you Were Here. Progressive rock gets more nobility and the electronic rock continues on its cosmic élan. While Tangerine Dream releases the somber Rubycon, Klaus Schulze shapes its spectral waves to offer us an outstanding work without smudges. Behind a stunning artwork, Klaus proposes us a galactic journey on the wings of time. Timewind, dedicated to Richard Wagner, is a long cosmic journey as much enchanting as its artwork.
A metallic wind blows on a dusty dune, pushing a multitude of sound plots which spin in the ambient air. Cold winds freeze the time on a bass line of which minimalist pulsations roll in loops while the cosmic touch of Klaus Sculze is unfolding with his Farfisa and synth waves which undulate on a sequential movement increasing with a heavier amplitude. Everything is with softness and fineness. On a heavy bass which tacks with darkness, "Bayreuth Return" drags its harmonies on tenebrous synth strata which leave their imprints for the passages to come. And the return of Bayreuth is doing with a cyclic whirlwind of synth layers which roll with subtle deviances, keeping the same delicacy of its movement until it stops to contemplate the extent of the road to be followed. Far off, the horizon is flat and desertic. It’s constituted by the same hypnotic sound abundance which attracts "Bayreuth Return" towards its endless walking. A walking in solitary where synth lizards push hoarse breaths, raising cosmic dusts which evaporate on sequential rhythms. Rhythms dancing in loops in a swirling abyss. And so Bayreuth ends abruptly its sound odyssey.
If you liked this galactic journey "Wahnfried 1883", inspired from the works of Wagner, continues in the same wake. Floating the intro is soaked with a heavy synth which moves hardly. In a latent state of suspension the intro is soaked by a heavy synth of which the waves float with passion but move hardly. Fixed in time the movement is surrounded with dusts of synth angels fluttering on subtle sequences which move with the delicacy of a spiral in weightlessness. Slow, supple and superbly intense "Wahnfried 1883" is an intense musical journey in the heart of analog years and its floating structures. A voyage in the borders of a cosmos that we still didn’t get all of its seducing beauty.
Timewind is the cd which had reveals Klaus Schulze to the American audience. And it’s understandable. Schulze plays with heavy rhythms and sequences with more maturity and depth. If "Bayreuth Return" kicks down the basses of our loud speakers with its undulating and rebel bass line, the synth strata which decorate the sidereal beauty of "Wahnfried 1883" get full of all the beauty that Schulze puts in them. Timwind is the fusion of anterior works from Schulze with the increasing maturity that he imposes to his style in order to prepare us very well to other great works. For that time it’s a colossal work which was going to free the inspiration and the boldness of several newcomers.
A re edition of Timewind! Was it worth it? Absolutely! Was it worthily of a 2 CD set? Of course…Although these are nice variations on the same theme since that ''Echoes of Times'' and ''Solar Wind'' are two variations of "Bayreuth Return" played in concert. Klaus Schulze played his classic on 3 occasions, in nearly 2 hours with different outtakes. After a stop he got back to play it in a different way. Only sequences are identical and the variations showed in intros. ''Solar Wind'' is being simply divine with its fluidity, while ''Windy Times'', writes in 2000, is a kind of mix of Timewind. It’s shorter and faster, while rolling on the same sequential pattern. It’s very good! Good as all of this double re edition of Timewind which is presented with a nice booklet which shows lot of inner notes and all the great artworks where Timewind was carefully wrapped. It’s a wonderful journey in time with the man to timeless music.
Sylvain Lupari (2007)
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=9400
*If you care to watch a complete and full-length time video of Bayreuth Return, you can click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wVp3entqjQ&feature=share

REMEMBER GREEN: Electro Shock (2011)

2011-12-25T09:31:00.000-05:00

''Electro Shock goes beyond the stereotypes of the Bang Bang Bang Bang Tsitt Tsitt''

1 Can you feel it/Electro Love 4:28
2 Electric Feeling 3:04
3 Electric Smile 4:10
4 Electricity through the Heart (With Nattefrost) 4:44
5 Electricity in your Eyes 4:26
6 Electro Dreams 4:39
7 Electro Shock (With Nattefrost) 5:08
8 Electro Technology 4:23
9 Get Electrified Now 4:20
10 Robot Song 4:19

Remember Green is the musical project of Danish musician and artist Steen Chorchendorff Jorgensen. Launched during the last Electronic Circus Festival on October 31st, 2011, Electro Shock is his first album. An album which benefits from the presence of Nattefrost on 2 titles and which offers 10 titles strongly soaked by a Kraftwerk approach, with robotics voices introducing most of the tracks and good Teutonic rhythms pulsating in the atmospheres slightly morphic of an eroded Berlin School. It’s a good hybrid album which will seduce both fans of synth pop and Berlin School.
It’s in a nice confusion of rhythms and atmospheres that opens Electro Shock. The sound is high and a hatched stroboscopic line encircles an ambience in fomenting which hang back between its rhythmic envelope and its floating elements. If the first tones of "Can you feel it-Electro Love" let augur a feverish rhythm, its progression is something else. It’s rather an atmosphere full of restraint that is getting in our ears with circular percussions and pulsations which bombard broken rhythms around tones of industrial and electronic machines, robotic voices à la Kraftwerk and good melodious elements such as a piano line and cosmic mist. Moreover the piano offers beautiful melodious samplings which criss-cross all along Electro Shock. The tempo comes and goes, dancing on a plump bed of uncertain sequences, jerky pulsations and tsitt-tsitt cymbals. "Electric Feeling" plunges us into the lunar rhythms of Electro Shock with percussions / pulsations, rolls and jingles of percussions which run on a delicate rhythm trapped in a nice floating envelope and weaved by a synth filled by mellotron mist. The cosmic sound effects abound and enrich this dividing musical structure, quite as the 9 others tracks on Electro Shock. "Electric Smile" offers a more flamboyant, a more rhythmical and also heavier down tempo. The fusion of ambient and rhythm is charmingly provided by a beautiful sequence line which moulds a good hatched flow while the melodious approach is decorated by a piano whose notes get lost in a strong electro-cosmic atmosphere. A little as on some titles on Electro Shock, it’s with a vocoder that opens "Electricity through the Heart". And even with a nice circular and stroboscopic sequenced approach and percussions rolling like an odd spatial military march, the rhythm of "Electricity through the Heart" is hyper soft and to the limit very smoothing. And Nattefrost brings a bigger lunar depth with intense layers of mist which coat a waltzing rhythm. Working on a similar pattern, "Electricity in your Eyes" offers the first synth solos which sing on ashes of another beautiful down-tempo.Curt percussions and hatched sequences bear the slow and jerky rhythm of "Electro Dreams". The title soaks into a beautiful cosmic mood where the latent tempo inhales the rhythmic approaches of "Can you feel it-Electro Love". The more we move forward into Electro Shock and the more we dive into rhythmic structures which are alike but whose fine variances attract the hearing. And so we shall fall under the spell of the title track "Electro Shock" whose approach is very Kraftwerk. A very musical synth covers a bed of sequences and percussions which throb of arrhythmic palpitations. Still there the tempo is slow and flows like a zombie duping the bone, while lines of stroboscopic sequences shape an approach filled by rhythmic confusion. "Electro Technology" is a good cosmic ballad with slamming percussions and a superb spiral sequence which winds a lascivious title to nice reminiscences of Tangerine Dream. "Get Electrified Now" is another beautiful ballad filled with mist. A mist sometimes stroboscopic which encircles rolling percussions, jerky sequences and scattered notes of a piano which looks for itself in this lunar setting. "Robot Song" concludes Electro Shock with a strong technoïd approach of the synth-pop years. The rhythm is lively with its huge synth pads which embrace a waltzing rhythmic of the 80’s. Jerky pads curved on a beautiful sequences and percussions fusion which pound around piano samplings and galactic tones.
Variations and subtleties on the same theme! However this first album of Remember Green offers about ten titles which are strangely alike with some fine variances mainly on rhythms. Except that Remember Green’s Electro Shock goes beyond the stereotypes of the Bang Bang Bang Bang Tsitt Tsitt with an interesting dosage of sometimes slow, sometimes heavy and sometimes more feverish rhythms which roam in morphic envelopes. If that destabilizes at the beginning, we let ourselves be charmed quite fast by this album coming out of nowhere and which deserves to go out of the anonymity.Sylvain Lupari (2011)
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=14796
* If you want to know more about Remember Green you can visit his website here: http://www.remembergreen.dk/

ALLUSTE: Digital Age (2011)

2011-12-23T19:37:00.000-05:00

''Digital Age is the meeting point between Baffo Banfi, Software, Klangwelt and Tangerine Dream''

Digital I 5:32
Digital II 7:26
Digital III 8:12
Digital IV 8:31
Digital V 6:55
Digital VI 8:44
Digital VII 5:37
Digital VIII 9:50
Digital XI 7:59
Digital X 8:16

Here is the 2nd opus from the Italian synth man Alluste. After an absence of more than 3 years Alluste presents us an album entirely made from synth softwares and plug-ins. The result is an album which embraces the cosmic rhythms of Software on sequenced élans that will make the fans of Tangerine Dream smile. A little as its title indicates, Digital Age is a beautiful incursion in the digital world where melodies can sometimes be dressed into warm appearances.
A synth pushes charming cooings on the opening of "Digital I", introducing fine acuteness melodies which contort in the nest of delicate crystalline arpeggios. These sequenced arpeggios spin of an uncertain approach, floating inside a mixture of twisted waves and metallic mist to lean on a heavy sequence which gallops towards a vertical movement. Between the synthetic and cosmic universe of Software and Tangerine Dream's heavy rhythms and sequences, Digital Age proposes a series of 10 titles where ambiences and tempos merge in beautiful morphic phases. I think in particular of "Digital III" and its rhythm which hiccups sneakily, increasing a bit a pace hushed by a smooth lunar synth, to "Digital IV", "Digital VI" and "Digital IX" which are rocking slowly in the shade of a threatening sequenced progression. "Digital II" is a small pearl which reminds me the oniric universe of Spheric Music’s Dreams of My Space. It’s soft, a bit sad and very romantic with the sustained synth breaths which drag in a cosmic mist and its delicate glass arpeggios which increase slowly on a vertical structure. This carousel of sequences might spin all around this static movement that it doesn’t mask at any moments its poetic depth. It’s very good and it’s heading straight away to my IPod to adorn my night of sleeps.
"Digital V" is doubtless the most musical and most poetic piece on this Alluste 2nd work. The whole thing starts with threatening hoops which float in a cosmos from where are escaping brief fragments of an unfinished melody. Carillons sparkle. Pushed by absent winds they go towards a solitary piano which accompanies the contemplative breaths of a poetic synth, creating a superb lunar melody which swells out harmonies with a great gradation orchestrated by a powerful bass line and a progressive sequential movement. And "Digital V" overturns into a heavy and circular rhythm with good nervous sequences which crisscross its lines in a curious rhythmic ballet. It’s very good and quite impressive for an album made from a PC. After a slow morphic intro "Digital VII" is rising itself by a great sequenced approach which pounds in the shade of nice lunar pads. The movement is displaying with a powerful loudness to end in a finale which is not without recalling Tangerine Dream and its brilliant Silver Scale. The same pattern is outlined on "Digital VIII", by far the best title on Digital Age, with a more mordant sequential movement. A movement which pulses heavily and whose hypnotic strikings beat over an iridescent cloud to face another movement built on a circular gallop and sharpness solos. It’s very good and especially very heavy. "Digital X" offers a variation on the same theme with a sequential approach which appears out of a dense cosmic cloud to offer one bewitching movement of chisel. Sequences which are crisscrossing in a beautiful melodious approach and which are going to feed themselves in the nest of heavier and more incisive sequences which lead this hypnotic circular movement towards the borders of the space.
A little as Gustavo Jobim, Alluste makes his compositions at home with his digital equipments. And as Gustavo Jobim, the synthesist demonstrates an excellent potential at the level of the writing and the melodious approaches. Digital Age is the meeting point between Baffo Banfi and his jerky rhythmic approaches, Software and their cosmic atmosphere which wraps rhythms and sequences, Tangerine Dream and its powerful sequence rides as well as Klangwelt for the melodious approaches. All in all, we have to admit that’s an interesting musical cocktail where only misses a zest of experiment at the level of mastering with the fine touch of a Ron Boots or Robert Schroeder to give nobility to a very beautiful effort which shows very good perspective.
Sylvain Lupari (2011)
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=14795
*If you want to know more about Alluste you can visit his BandCamp page here:

http://alluste.bandcamp.com/

ROBERT RICH: Medecine Box (2011)

2011-12-21T15:05:00.002-05:00

''Robert Rich just made a beautiful poetic album''

1 Alba 4:16
2 Kaaruwana 6:18
3 Macula 6:27
4 Cornea 5:24
5 Crepescule 6:39
6 Pollen 7:33
7 Callyx 5:58
8 Salamander Quay 7:37
9 Helios 10:42
SOUNDSCPAPE: SP022

Robert Rich always succeeds in creating a musical world where emotions and spirituality feed beautiful contemplative structures. Following the precepts established on Ylang, the American synthesist offers in Medecine Box a meditative album where ancestral rhythms beat on a skilful fusion of more contemporary instruments and sound samplings. Making so, he offers 9 very beautiful titles with stunning tribal atmospheres which are rocking between the ambient and soft rhythms, at once hypnotic and progressive. Here is a journey in the heart of countries without borders, there where reign a bewitching shamanic karma.
A rich mixture of wave-like pulsations, smooth bass notes and hand percussions open the very fluid rhythm of "Alba". Guitar riffs get stick to this quiet structure, throwing a soft jazzy veil and opening the way to superb floating solos which whisper, such as spectral laments, over these captivating tom-toms. With its peaceful rhythm, which hooks from the first listening, "Alba" introduces us into a musical universe rich in subtlety, both in kinds and tones. The rhythm of "Kaaruwana" is more ambivalent. Between the élans of pulsations/percussions which tumble into felted lanes and a certain restraint in a tremulous approach imposed by the soft angelic voice of Cheri Chuang, "Kaaruwana" displays a more ethereal mood, even supranatural, which is bitten all the same by a beautiful bass filled of juicy notes. This ghostly mood overhangs all over the album and this no matter the rhythmic approaches. "Macula" presents a very beautiful musical pattern with lascivious percussions of which the strikings seem frozen in time and resound among layers and ethereal voices, drawing an at once spectral and intriguing atmosphere. The piano in it is as much discreet as magical, displaying a nice meditative melody and re-covering of its melancholic notes a structure which is near an astral trance. It’s a very good title on this Robert Rich's last opus which weaves a beautiful musical painting where bird singings, xylophones of glasses and weakened cymbals decorate a world without borders. "Crepescule" is about in the same register, except the flutes bring a more poetic and clanic key touch. "Cornea" transports us in the mysteries of New Orleans’ bayous with a nebulous rhythmic approach. The bass is slow and coos beneath strikings of percussions to abstruse tones while the harmonica blows a black melody quite as much vague there. As a kind of Western with dark jazz tendencies.
Soft blows of a pensive flute open "Pollen". Aboriginal tom-toms offer a soft unstable rhythm that the pleasant meditative voice of Cheri Chuang wraps of a mesmerizing spiritual aura. The bass is delicious and bites delicately into this bewitching rhythmic which gradually wriggles on good riffs, more and more anxious pulsations / palpitations and solid knocks of hands percussions, guiding "Pollen" towards another intense spiritual trance. That’s a very good passage on Medecine Box where the bass resuscitates old souvenirs of certain Patrick O' Hearn. A small jewel! Fitting to this model of crescendo "Callyx" is also delicious with its percussions which espouse the knells of carillons and its layers of spectral guitars. Moulded in the paths of "Pollen", voice in less, "Salamander Quay" remains dark and very ambient. The ambience is heavy and enthralling, a little as an intense Amerindian incantation, where circulate nice fragments of melodies wrapped in the silks of flutes or pianos. Melodies lost inside a structure soaked of a shamanic magnetism aura. "Helios" closes this Robert Rich's last opus in a magnificent musical pattern which depicts all the facets of Medecine Box. Breaths of flutes float over a mixture of percussions and pulsations. This shamanic intro is getting alive bits by bits on the strikings more and more fed by the percussions / pulsations which drum to the rhythms of fine tribal trances. Carried away by the breaths of flute and the languishing élans of cello, the rhythm of "Helios" progresses in a beautiful crescendo of emotions and hypnotic rhythms before falling on meditative and ambient ice floes. The angelic voice Cheri Chuang resurfaces. Her breaths are mixing to celestial voices and layers, sweeping the sinuous reverberations and quieting down the tribal ardours with a soft paradisiacal incantation.
Medecine Box is a beautiful poetic album. On ambivalent rhythms and misty atmospheres, where the mythical American folklore is soaked by a fascinating shamanic aura, Robert Rich weaves a mesmerizing and fascinating musical universe. Like on Ylang, Medecine Box is at the antipodes of cerebral beauties with its intriguing atmospheres as much spectral as supranaturals and its breaths of ancestral spirits which sing beneath the cover of a contemporary music technology. The result is surprising of beauty. A beauty of which the essence increases as we are letting ourselves subject by the lyrical charm of Robert Rich.
Sylvain Lupari (2011)
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=14790
* If you want to know more about the exotic world of Robert Rich and hear some MP3 snippets, you can visit his website here: http://robertrich.com/
* You can also watch promotional videos of Medecine Box on YouTube:
Salamander Quay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP_E9gFwDAU
Helios: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8G6fZkGmoM

ROBERT RICH: Ylang (2010)

2011-12-20T15:10:00.001-05:00

''Ylang is as much beautiful as the unknown can be attractive''

1 Ambergris 4:14
2 Translucent 4:59
3 Attar 6:38
4 Verbena 5:03
5 Kalyani 8:09
6 Vetiver 6:25
7 Tamarack 5:38
8 Charukesi 7:11
9 First Rain 4:59

SOUNDSCPAPE: SP021

A tree from the Philippines, the Ylang-Ylang produces an essential oil for the uses of perfumes. And it’s also the title of Robert Rich's 1st solo album since 2007 Illumination. This last opus of the American multi-instrumentalism is also perfumed of an equatorial and tropical scent with a multiclanic approach where fragrances of a world as Amerindian as Asian border on an oniric one which is very near the Buddhisms and Tibetans spiritualities. With Ylang Robert Rich proposes a cerebral journey in the heart of South-East Asia forests on tribal structures of an underestimated and charming world, where aboriginal percussions mould enigmatic lascivious and latent rhythms on breaths of an omnipresent flute and angelic vocals.
A fine rain, delicate arpeggios forgotten on a piano and a solitary flute introduce the first chords of "Ambergris". The tempo falls. Weary it bends in front of strata from a spectral guitar and a tearful synth which encircle this musical firmament from where escapes multitude of chords on lascivious percussions. Percussions which mould a rhythm mi sensual and mi ghostly quite as on "Tamarack" although it’s more accessible and more enchanting with the Lap Steel Guitar whose waves float such as wandering specters. The rhythms on Ylang are very subtle. Ultimately we could think that the album is more atonal than rhythmic except that tempos are always present and draw a very ambivalent rhythmic architecture. "Translucent" and "Verbena" are perfect examples. The tempos are looming from strange Amerindian tribal incantations and are always latent. Without ever exploding or progressing excessively, they soak in a rich sound atmosphere and are of use as assizes to very poetic and oniric musical structures where hand percussions, flutes, ethereal voices and synth with slightly nervous dress a heterogeneous and spiritual musical world. On Ylang Robert Rich renew with the fragrances of his musical world. The flute is the key element of "Attar" and "Kalyani" where slamming percussions and a jazzy bass sculpt a slow morphic tempo. These are two beautiful enigmatic titles because of their crossings between a Tibetan mystic world which goes alongside with slow and sensual jazz structures to waddle languishingly on great aboriginal percussions and a sound flora very rich in clanic variations.
"Vetiver" is what is the closest to Robert Rich's desertic universe (as well as Tamarack). With its rich percussions to hybrid strikes on drifting structures, "Vetiver" revolves in an atonal world where the breaths of flutes become intermingled with synth snippets and angelic vocalizes, structuring a somber arid world. It’s a very good track where we can get its entire dimension through headphones. With its progressive tempo which wriggles beneath the steams of Amerindian flutes, "Charukesi" is unfolding like a slow Indian procession. It’s a title without precise rhythms but which gets its energy through Robert Rich's furious flute. Languishing, plaintive and melancholic, "First Rain" ends this soft tribal musical epic with violin orchestrations to make the indifference melt. Still there the rhythm is uncertain, navigating on a sea of xylophone keys and rich violin strata which encircles a discreet plaintive synth and the notes of a forsaken piano.
Ylang is as much beautiful as the unknown can be attractive. Through its 9 titles, Robert Rich succeeds in weaving a musical structure of a stunning beauty. But like a beauty unsung in jungle Ylang has to be to tame. Because if titles like "Ambergris", "Vetiver" and "Tamarack" will be a delight for the fans of Robert Rich, the other titles will need a rediscovery of his stunning and always so rich musical universe. As for me I enjoyed so much discovering these strange and enchanting rhythms which don’t know if they dance or if they sink in an eclectic, poetic and often oniric musical world which is the fruit of Robert Rich's fertile imagination.
Sylvain Lupari (2010)
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=13325
* If you want to know more about the exotic world of Robert Rich and hear some MP3 snippets, you can visit his website here: http://robertrich.com/

SAM ROSENTHAL: The Passage (2011)

2011-12-19T21:19:00.000-05:00

''The musical union of Vicky Richard and Sam Rosenthal is breathtaking''

1 The Passage 44:29
2 Rae 10:12

PROJEKT: PRO265

It’s the very first time that my ears cross the music of Sam Rosenthal, founder of the American label of dark and ambient music Projekt. And I have to admit that I came of it my ears filled by a masses of immersive and meditative soundwaves from two instruments to the antipodes of their existences. The Passage is a dark and intimist work which accompanies us in the reading of our thoughts and our abstruse souvenirs. It’s the blackness in immobilism and a front door towards passages of our interior. It’s a kind of crossing between Steve Roach's Immersion series and the amazing Bernard Xolotl's procession. It’s as much beautiful as that can be dark and also fascinating that a union synth/ violin can be.
It’s the twilights of the most factual the title track brings us. A great combination synth and violins waves of opens the intro. A union which will lead us during almost the 45 minutes towards a strange lethal labyrinth. A mislaid bat lets his wings float violently in this blackness, adding an uncomfortable dimension to these slow morphic layers which float with an intriguing attraction. Little by little, she pursues her uneven flight towards distant horizons before disappearing and leave this slow immersive waltz wrapped our spirit. "The Passage" is a long passage of softness and blackness. It’s an intense dive into silence and its sighs of tortured souls. A little as if we were hidden in a longitudinal corridor without windows, openings and nor stemming to listen to winds complaining about darkness. Winds of which we can’t discern the singings of groans and of which fine and subtle spheres of influence brush our immobilism. We would believe being in the most profound abysses of Steve Roach's Immersion series with this thick cloud of layers darker than morphic which encircle the outlines of our imagination, sculpturing the fine oscillations which they form. "The Passage" is nearly 45 minutes of listening to these winds rolling our thoughts up to the doors of weak lights which come from it, a little after the 30 first minutes. We are entering then within the sanctuary of angelic soundwaves. Waves which abound in a soft luminosity and form fine arcs filled of melodies which refuse to emerge, preferring to protect the beauty of their hatchings. And quietly we float up to the doors of "Rae", there where everything is clearer and more serene. The musical union of Vicky Richard and Sam Rosenthal is breathtaking, so much it’s intense, enchanting and poetic. It’s more than the sun after the rain. It’s as a rainbow in the middle of the night. A magic place where even bats feed themselves near the iridescent lights.
Sylvain Lupari (2011)
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=14787

STEVE ROACH: Journey of One (2011)

2011-12-16T19:05:00.000-05:00

''Journey of One is intense, boiling and mesmerizing''

1 Journey of One (Part One) 47:32
2 Journey of One (Part Two) 50:59

PROJEKT: PRO00266

No need to hide it, Steve Roach is a character as important as Klaus Schulze in the universe of ambient and progressive EM. Over the years, the Californian synthesist has threaded some real masterpieces of music as much ambient as tribal and sequenced. Journey of One retraces a little bit these genres during a concert held in Sacramento, on November 8th, 1996. Back then the somber wind maker was at the peak of his inquisition of a strange tribal and ambient musical universe. Alone on stage, the one-man band gave a stunning performance of meditative and clanic EM, jumping from an instrument to another and offering a great musical act as much hallucinating as mesmerizing.
An Aeolian turbulence sends dark winds which swirl at the opening of Journey of One. Streaks of an unearthly synth coat this Aeolus din, pushing remote murmurs to whisper at the edge of clanic tam-tams. Steve Roach weaves his rhythmic canvas with powerful ethnic percussions which sound an alert under a sky darkened of ululating streaks and aboriginal spectral lamentations. This spasmodic movement which introduces the intro of "Journey of One (Part One)" becomes more sensual and more bewitching with slower percussions which drum lazily, introducing the hoarse blows of the Didgeridoo. We are about the 7 minutes and already we float in Steve Roach's tribal and paranormal universes. The rhythm goes from lascivious to nervous, but always arched on these superb clanic hands percussions. If the first 14 minutes offer a steady rhythm, "Journey of One (Part One)" embraces a strange atmospheric phase. The Californian synthesist displays a whole glaucous and eerie world there with paranormal whispers and winds which float and wave among corridors fed by somber layers of a morphic synth. Our ears drag into the 4th segment of "Part One", where the rhythm became absent. A supernatural mood reigns over there with winds and breaths of Ocarina floating over seed pod shakers and various carillons. We are deep in the heart of desolation lands, there where only the deaths whisper at night and where winds return their incantations. Tam-tams wake up and thunder a little after the 6th segment, awakening this desertic ground for a nice5 minutes before the rhythm disappear in winds, moving some ashes here and there, while iridescent spectres and voices from outer-grave ululate and rage in a point of no return.
"Journey of One (Part Two)" is knitted in the same musical pattern as "Part One". The intro offers a short and more cheerful rhythmic introduction with keyboard riffs which roll in loops beneath deep ethnic percussions. This rhythm becomes blurred a little after the 3rd minute, leaving space to the mesmerizing incantations of the Didgeridoo. And so Steve Roach's clanic and desertic universe is outlined. The 3rd segment brings us in a dark and spellbinding ambiance with lascivious clay water pots percussions which bear shaman incantations. Dark and mysterious prayers which are lulled by suave layers of a floating synth, delicious wizard rattles and nice tinkled butterfly cocoons. Segment 4 offers a rhythmic approach of spiritual trance. The rhythm is curt and nervous. Steve Roach drums a heavy rhythm which wriggles beneath precious layers of a synth filled with warm winds. Winds which carry the sounds of carillons towards a more meditative part where glaucous pulsations pulse loudly, reminding the ambient universe of Suspended Memories. The 7th section of "Part Two" is the corner stone of Journey of One. It’s a long segment of more than 15 minutes where percussions draw a heavy and dense rhythm. A hypnotic rhythm that layers of a multi- lined synth wrap of a delicious magical aura. This frenzied rhythm is slowing down little by little, driving us towards a more ghostly passage where spirits of desert roar with synth winds, arising Didgeridoo’s hoarse breaths. The percussions there are superb and the atmosphere is stunning. If we have the chance to listen it with earphones, our pleasure is decupled. Totally awesome! The last part is more ethereal and also more musical. It’s a beautiful ambient passage. A little like the sun coming after the storm, we sat and let ourselves lull by these soft synth layers that will inevitably bring us within another den of the Californian synthman.
It’s obvious that Steve Roach produces CD by the ton. The man is prolific and his works get multiply. Except that the man of Californian deserts has the talent and emotions of his ideologies, giving thus his works an enchanting depth as few synthesists, or composers, are able of bringing to our ears. And Journey of One is no different. It’s intense, boiling and mesmerizing. That goes into our ears to disappear in our memories with a plucking in the deep of our eardrums. It’s a wonderful meditative album which amazes in each of its grooves quite as all the works from the Lord of aboriginal lands.
Sylvain Lupari (2011)
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=14786
* If you want to know more about Steve Roach and hear some MP3 snippets, you can visit his website here: http://www.steveroach.com/

POLARIS & KRZYSZTOF HORN: Collision (2011)

2011-12-14T17:02:00.001-05:00

''Collision is a wonderful album of contemporary EM''

1 Collision 11:37
2 Mal Du Siecle 9:30
3 Octahedron Moon 6:11
4 The Parent of all Others 1:58
5 Berolina Train 15:34
6 Subconscious Choice 7:11
RICOCHET DREAM: RD065

Here is an album which is the subject of much talk in contemporary EM circle. Stemming from a live improvisation session during the last Ricochet Gathering held in Berlin in 2010, Collision from Polaris & Krzysztof Horn is a stunning journey in the universe of sounds and musical samplings which feed a musical fauna to scents of old Berlin School and more contemporary rhythms of down-tempo and mid-tempo. It’s a bit as we mixed morphic synth layers from Schulze or Froese to nervous rhythms of Spyra or Namlook. It’s simply delicious and we ask for more of it, as our ears tame this surprising meshing of sounds and musical images.
Yet the introduction of the title track, "Collision", let nothing perspire as it with this colourful universe where contorted tones team up with a warm synth line which coos under fine tinkled arpeggios. The first stammerings of scratched metal can be heard a little after 90 seconds. Cracklings sparkling under the axis of a warm synth curve inflame odd silvery pulsations which cavort awkwardly beneath suave synth layers with a slightly apocalyptic outline, confining the soft musical envelope of "Collision" to slow down the boiling of heterogeneous and metallic tones which germs throughout its evolution. Because beyond aborted ping-pong knocks-up, anemic cymbal’s tsitt-tsitt and cracklings slides a delicious bass line which draws a strange futuristic down-tempo pulsing beneath chipped streaks and nice synth lines of which tones wake Berlin School vestiges. And the more we move forward in Collision and the more those syncretic sound effects scatter, leaving room to good and sweet melodies and nice flexible rhythms. "Mal Du Siecle" fits in to these sinuous ghostly sound-waves and in the stigmatized ashes of "Collision" to pound of a magnetic beating of metallic heart. Muffled beatings pulse in a swallow hole built in the heart of enormous subterranean machinery, increasing its pace and amplitude. A little as a train progressing in a universe of din and beneath curves of synth lines fill of Blade Runner tones. And once arrived to destination, we can hear the rustles of a crowd misled in its steps. It’s very beautiful and rather catchy. There are no empty spaces on Collision and the Polish duet fills the air of a thick cloud of composite tones which mould a surrealist urban fauna beneath nice fragments of melodies. With its guitar riffs and chords running in loops under a fine hatched line, "Octahedron Moon" takes a different register that sounds a bit as Michael Rother's sound world. It’s very melodious and it pours beneath muddy beeps and rustles of white noises before tumbling into a more static passage where percussions, pulsations and cyborgs dialects burst under morphic synth layers. After brief and doubtful "The Parent of all Others", "Berolina Train" moves on with a series of loops from a synth which subdivides its lines to procreate wandering choirs. These loops and choirs travel and wave, crossing riffs and pads which flutter nervously, while the longest title of Collision goes quietly towards a more technoïd mood. "Berolina Train" becomes then a very nice down- tempo which moves its rhythmic approach beneath assorted tones which espouse and the shape and its melodious approach. The rhythm is supple and lulls on a fine pulsating line, nervous keyboard riffs and good layers of a floating synth, adding a very nice parallelism dimension to a universe of industrial dance-floor. And when our ears clear the undergrowth the rhythm from the ambiance we hear a beautiful sequencing pattern pounding beneath a smooth synth filled by reminiscences of vintage Berlin School. Marvellous! By far the most striking track on Collision which continues its strange and hypnotic eclectic crusade with "Subconscious Choice", another splendid down-tempo filled by silvered layers which undulate in industrial loops beneath dashing tsitt-tsitt, nervous floating riffs and a series of palpitations which pour into the rhythm such as an arrhythmia programmed sober percussions.
Collision from Polaris and Krzysztof Horn is a wonderful album of contemporary EM. The Polish duet weaves a surrealist sound and musical universe which converges constantly on progressive rhythms. Rhythms which are skilfully buried in vintage Berlin School aromas with a musical outline imprinted by soft synth layers which float and wrap rhythms progressing towards nice and delicious down-tempo. We are at the borders of a brilliant criss-crossed musical universe. And it’s as much beautiful as that can be bewitching. It’s another jewel of contemporary and progressive EM on the crown already very well furnished of Ricochet Dream.
Sylvain Lupari (2011)
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=14782
* There is a nice promotional video that you can view on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghaTWU2uxsI

POLARIS: Background Stories (2008)

2011-12-14T16:29:00.000-05:00

''Polaris’ Background Stories is quite a lucky find from Ricochet Dream''

1 Lucid Dream 7:10
2 Permutations-Part I 5:46
3 Permutations-Part II 4:03
4 975-2 6:17
5 Flashback 7:37
6 Smile! 4:27
7 Out Of Alignment 6:02
8 Voltage Controlled Inspirations 5:35
9 Les Structures Logiques (Polaris's Version) 5:52
10 Nostalgy 6:49
RICOCHET DREAM: RD036

Polaris is the musical project of Polish musician Jakub Kmieć. Initially inspired by retro Berlin School, Polaris re orientated his musical approach being inspired by Spyra and a more contemporary music. Background Stories, his 3rd opus, offers a disconcerting musical diversity where abstract clears blithely a path through melodious bases.
Imprecise soundwaves coil up in loops into heavy reverberating loops which come and go; ''Lucid Dream'' introduces us straight ahead and quickly into the complex musical universe of Polaris. Nice percussions of a tribal sort lead to a hatched and bass sequential movement which wriggles sensually on a funky bass line in a cosmic universe stuffed by composite sound effects and heavy and wrapping synth strata. Background Stories is filled by these threatening soundwaves of which the heavy reverberations roll in a musical fauna rich in originality. And that’s how ''Permutations'' is opening. Pulsations frame a languishing rhythm encircled by a captivating synth which drops long solos swirling idly. The tempo gets more sensual with a nice hesitating piano which throws its notes in a jazz-lounge ambiance sustained by suggestive percussions. Crystalline arpeggios inspire a new sound direction introducing the 2nd part of ''Permutations'' which progresses with a more solid rhythm and a more dynamic piano. The pace becomes spasmodic with electronic percussions which roll in the hazes of a rippling synth which slowly eats the life out of ''Permutations''. The more we progress throughout Background Stories the more we evolve in a strange sound world. ''975-2'' is a long sensual monologue which wanders among a pleiad of sound effects all as strange as unusual. The bass is weighty and shapes a structure in perdition lost in a universe of thousand sound prisms. After a cosmic and floating intro ''Flashback'' explodes on beautiful sequential crossings. The keyboard drops keys which wind in echo, creating a melody to multiple dimensions which takes diverse forms, listening after listening. It’s a very good moment on Background Stories. ''Smile'' is abstracted with its metallic gas which embellish a musical world without concrete rhythms with misled and split up melodious fragments in a very caustic musical approach. With its heterogeneous percussions which are molding to an anvil sounding sequential movement filled of glass tones, ''Out of Alignment'' says it all. Quite soon, some nice tight-fitting strata wrap an indistinct rhythm structure which hooks to a waving bass, redefining its tempo with a techno funky approach on honeyed synth to lamentations of an electric guitar. ''Voltage Controlled Inspirations'' soaks into a cosmic electronic atmosphere with a plaintive synth to very acute and melodious whistlings on a discreetly sensual bass which coo in a rather hermetic atmosphere. This atmospheric rhythmic approach continues on ''Les Structures Logiques (Polaris's Version)''. Although less sensual and more livened up the tempo lives in nebulous spheres of a DJ that has a cosmic-experimental approach with a synth filled of imperfect minimalism chords which catch easily the hearing. ''Nostalgy'' ends this latest work of Polaris as it began. A melody dancing on heavy synth reverberations which become entangled to melodious chords and supported by a good percussions play, a bit less tribal, but just as much effective.
Polaris’ Background Stories is quite a lucky find from Ricochet Dream. It’s a more contemporary opus than EM Berlin School style. It’s a kind of progressive techno in a much diversified sound world which amazes so much by its originality than its complexity, while preserving a sort of melodious approach. A mixture of contemporary Spyra with Synth.NL passion and the disappeared boldness of Jarre. It’s to discover for those whose sound exploration is a treat for ears… although that the melodious aspect facilitates largely the taming.
Sylvain Lupari (2008)
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=11987
* If you want to know more about Polaris, you can visit his website here:

http://polarismusic.eu/

RON BOOTS: Beyond the Boundaries of Twilight (2009)

2011-12-13T09:09:00.001-05:00

''Beyond the Boundaries of Twilight is another jewel signed Ron Boots!''

1 Cradle of Life 14:06
2 The Story 5:28
3 At the Dawn of Life 6:21
4 In the Skies 11:35
5 The Vastness of Space 5:31
6 Galactic Traveller 6:46
7 Sunrise on FarPoint Station 6:42
8 Heroes 6:53
9 Giants in the Skies 8:01
GROOVE: GR-162

It is in a complete metallic anarchy that the first track ''Cradle of Life'' begins. Metal on metal, in an atmosphere stuffed with cosmic breaths, the track feels one's way along a corridor of harmony, moulded by choirs of which breaths become entangled in oblong synthesized strata. What could we expect more from an introductory title for a concert presented in a planetarium? Beyond the Boundaries of Twilight is the last one of a series of concerts that Ron Boots performed in planetariums during the last years. Accompanied by Frank Dorittke (F.D. Project) on guitars, the Dutch synthesist offers in Beyond the Boundaries of Twilight his vision of a parallel world with music which mixes deliciously ambient passages with numerous lively structures.
If ''Cradle of Life'' intro is caustic, its awakening and blossoming develops into a superb ambient passage worth of sublime landscapes of Chronos. A bass awakens a structure of tearful synthesized breaths next to a series of pulsations which plunge ''Cradle of Light'' towards a more progressive rock structure than electronic, fed by Dorittke's guitar, a good rhythmic mould from keyboards of cosmic insertions and percussions which hammer a steady rhythm. It's under the timeless loops of ''The Story'', which roll in loops in a cosmic corridor, that Ron Boots explains the vision of his musical conception around the album. A track that breathes on a quiet musical structure of flickering sound effects, which slides lovingly towards the superb ''At the Dawn of Life'' and its honeyed structure where the ethereal atmosphere of infinite spaces is living through a synth of crystalline arpeggios which float between two spheres, while a soft battery resounds its skins in the cosmic borders which illuminate our imagination. ''In the Skies'' dive directly towards a rhythm livened up by nervous sequences which hiccup a jerky tempo hammered by good electronic percussions, under a magnificent Mellotron coat. Synth solos fuse from everywhere and are joined by Dorittke's biting guitar which adds much more power to a loud and vigorous track, of which these solos cross a furious rhythmic which quietly runs out and cogitates in an ambient and caustic structure. Bouncing pulsations prepare a rhythmic revival which will be a bit less vigorous, but just as weightier with a very acuteness guitar which is moulding marvellously to Ron Boots' solos in what becomes a beautiful merger of electronic and progressive music. After the very atmospheric and enigmatically strange ''The Vastness of Space'', ''Galactic Traveller'' presents a somber pace sprinkled of hopping arpeggios which float in suspension in a cosmic universe where the synth sounds predominates by solos of apocalyptic breathes which scan the space of their intense musical beams. Contemporary Blade Runner on a very soft cosmic tempo.
After a morphic intro, ''Sunrise on FarPoint Station'' appears from cosmic mists with a series of percussions filled of echotic doubloons which shape rhythms with heavy pulsations, under the hold of an opaque Mellotron veil. A not so common track where the rhythm waves on a beautiful line of bass running in cascade, but which is in constant tightness with a stagnant nebulosity, where percussions of metallic flitting and an ochre synth are the beginnings of a strange cosmic melody. Very moving, ''Heroes'' is a title which depicts perfectly its conceptual orientation with a soft synth of juxtaposed breaths, among which one fits to perfection a solitary flute that whistles for its harmonies above Mellotron mists. Fine percussions resound with their echoes among fanciful choirs which shape with delicacy and compassion this melodious musical piece that reach its highlight with Frank Dorittke’s somewhat lonely guitar. One of the very beautiful melodies of 2009 where nothing is left to random, not even these small bells which coat ''Heroes'' of its so sensitive cachet. With its very Floydian feeling, ''Giants in the Skies'' is a skilful mixture of progressive blues and contemporary electronic music, with the excellent guitar of FD Project which spits heavy sensual solos and lascivious and heavy tempos where keyboards plunge us into the heart of Wish you Were Here.
Beyond the Boundaries of Twilight is another jewel signed Ron Boots. The Dutch synthesist offers a skilful mixture of an ambient electronic music, livened up by sober sequences, but supported by beautiful electronic percussions. There are wonderful titles in this work which caresses romantic steams of contemporary electronic music while flirting with a more progressive rock approach with Frank Dorittke's presence on guitars. A very beautiful album which is listed in my 2009 Top 10!

Sylvain Lupari (2009)
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=12714