“Acheloo's Dream is a pleasant discovery where the nomadic poetries of Erik Wollo soar around cosmic perfumes and ambient rhythms”
1 Life 3:39
2 Deep Time 5:56
3 Light Dream 7:22
4 Ephemeral Promises part I 6:49
5 Ephemeral Promises part II 6:27
6 A Final Vision 5:46
7 Winter Light 7:37
8 New Horizons 4:00
9 Into the Light 5:04
10 The Invisible Motion of Time 4:43
AD Music | AD129 Digital (DDL 57:32)
(Ambient esoteric EM)
Notes of a forsaken guitar are dragging in loops, floating in winds of sapphire, and Life invades our ears by a delicate morphic approach that a dense veil of iridescent mist covers of an evasive melody forged in the lamentations of a solitary six-strings. Coated in a mesmerizing melancholic approach, the music of DREAM invites itself in our ears like an unknown friend inviting himself to tell us many esoteric stories. It's in the chinks of the astral quietude that Achello invites us to his very ethereal music where the nomadic poetries of Erik Wollo soar around cosmic perfumes and ambient rhythms.
Muffled pulsations rock the quiet rhythm of Deep Time which swings under the charms of elfish voices and a delicate rivulet of silent arpeggios which sparkles in the chords of a guitar daydreaming in the moonlight. The rhythm is aphasic, hypnotic. Notes of an acoustic guitar, which scratch the ambiences under the curved lines of an electric guitar as much plaintive as the choirs are floating, draw a fascinating mood of cosmic desert. We cannot ignore the links which tie the music of Carlo Luzi to Erik Wollo's, because the similarities are clearly present throughout the 58 minutes of DREAM. On the very ambient and ethereal Light Dream these lines of guitar cry and glide in the soft perfumes of the seraphic voices. It's quite beautiful and very penetrating! One would say a first part to Into the Light which, on the other hand, offers a delicately more drummed structure. Ephemeral Promises is the cornerstone of this quite good last album of Acheloo. Part One deploys a morphic veil with a tearful guitar which draws evanescent melodies. These sighs of melancholy float in the opaline drizzle of the mist forged by a mellotron synth of which the dense floating and chloroformique shroud reminds me a little of Pink Floyd's David Wright on Wish You Were Here. Muffled explosions burst while a beautiful stroboscopic line lays down a finely jerky rhythm which waves and swirls before resting in a more ambient rhythm where the bites of guitars float like lost souls in a long ambient passage. Soft and nice solos awaken the 2nd portion of Ephemeral Promises Part II which hangs onto arpeggios of which the ascent ends in a beautiful cosmic down-tempo.
One of the big strengths of DREAM is this sonic painting which covers the rhythms and ambiences. Besides the reveries and the wanderings of his guitar, Achello embroiders a fascinating poetic mood with a variety of sound effects, beautiful strings pattern, stifled sequences and quiet scattered percussions which thwart these same rhythms and atmospheres, forging so an ethereal universe where the rhythms are captive of astral ambiences. There are also glaucous moods, as on In Final Vision which inhales Steve Roach's tribal strangeness. Very good, just like New Horizons and its structure of delicately jerky spheroidal rhythm. A rotatory and puny electronic rhythm with gases of percussions and where the guitar weaves its spectral shadows. A good mixture of Wollo and Roach. Winter Light brings us back into Erik Wollo's pure atmospheres with notes of guitar which roll in loops and weave an ideal sonic background for a more intuitive guitar and its fragile solos which cry in the breezes of a fluty synth. I like the soft crescendo which pushes the track to the limits of a heavy cosmic progressive rock, just like in The Invisible Motion of Time which ends the chapter of DREAM with an ambient mood. A mood filled by ambiospherical sound elements where the tears of guitars fall with emotion in this guitar/synth mixture which spreads these harmonious contrasts and which make of this last album of Achelloo more than a simple curiosity; a beautiful album of ethereal and meditative EM, although it may moves delicately some times. This is what I call a pleasant discovery.
Sylvain Lupari (September 5th, 2013) ***½**
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