“I like these ambient rhythms which pound in an organic life and which whispers us to the ear all what escapes our perceptivity and Aftermath 2.0 is full of it”
Aftermath # 01 7:49 Aftermath # 02 6:31 Aftermath # 03 7:51 Aftermath # 04 3:16 Aftermath # 05 5:30 Aftermath # 06 6:01 Aftermath # 07 4:03 Aftermath # 08 9:09 Ultimae Records | inre 10.2
(DDL 50:10) (Psybient and organic down tempos)
Initially released in 2003, Aftermath gets a sound lifting in this new remastered version available only on the Ultimae Records download platform. AFTERMATH 2.0 - Archives of Peace is an album to the slow evolution with its ambiences divided between the astral and spectral cosmic which undulate, sing and make noise through delicate broken rhythms. Vincent Villuis has reworked the whole album besides adding a new track, Aftermath # 08 for the greater pleasure of the ears which had ignored the first version. This story of psybient on background of down-tempos also stages a good friend of me Paul Takahashi who feeds by images the 8 stages of AFTERMATH 2.0 - Archives of Peace with a series of photos of microscopic elements which fill a universe in perpetual movement, quite as this last work of Aes Dana. Aftermath # 01 is waking up to the ambient life with some chirping of astral birds which dialogue with the celestial rumblings and layers of synths tinged by angelic voices and fluty breezes. Sometimes glaucous and sometimes dreamlike, Aftermath # 01 floats between its clouds of buzzing toxicity, its seraphic breezes and its flutes to the azure breaths, roaming for a portion of rhythm which pounds shyly in its last rolled moaning noises. Aftermath # 02 follows the same tangent before embracing a good down-tempo which feeds on its echo. The rhythm is structured on a meshing of organic pulsations which reminds me a little of Jarre's and some percussions of which the strikings reverberate in a shape of rhythmic echo. A pattern of melodic loops gets twist up all around the rhythm that the soft seraphic voice of Pascale Auffret caresses of warm ethereal breaths. The gliding rhythm of Aftermath # 03 is articulated around jerked hits of percussions and pulsations. It's a curt rhythm which swells with a sober bass line and which is decorated of delicate shimmered and singing arpeggios which wave against the measure of the pace. The 2nd part offers a structure of more aggressive rhythm which pounds with its bass pulsations skipping in their circles of rhythm, swirling on the spot as we do when we want to imitate the ground flight of the palmipeds in rhythmic areas of turbulence. It's a very good passage on AFTERMATH 2.0 - Archives of Peace which falls in the cosmic limbos of the brief but effective Aftermath # 04 and whom the organic pulsations overflow into Aftermath # 05 and of its musical look which reminds to me of Juno Reactor. The pattern of puffed melody in the circles of glass comes back to haunt a surprising meshing of percussions which flicker, flash and resound such as elytrons of metal of which the varied forms spit tones as hollow as lively in the shadows of the sequenced pulsations which hammer into a vertical rhythm. Voices of temporary insanities are spinning and are sighing; Aftermath throughout this powerful track to the scents of psy-trance. Aftermath # 06 is a long ambient passage knocked off by black and hollow winds while that Aftermath # 07 surfs on the waves which bind both tracks to extricate itself from its noisy intro where incongruous knockings reverberate into the voices which are just as much, while quietly an overexcited piano embalms Aftermath # 07 of a superb approach of dark musing. Fans of Picture Palace Music will adore this passage. Aftermath # 08 is the new track on this sound alteration work that is AFTERMATH 2.0 - Archives of Peace and it's a damn good one. If the intro is of organic ambiance with chords of piano converging, the one on the other one, in a sound confusion deserving of an epileptic crack, the rhythm begins to buzz just before the 3rd minute with percussions to the metallic breezes which spit their poisons sizzling on the jerky movements of an up-tempo. Minimalist, the track is storing up its ambiances of white noises and static implosions, its slamming and sparkling percussions, its line of humming bass as well as its melody strummed in a recurring pattern which stops running in loops as soon as the tempo becomes more pulsatory and as soon as it flickers of its silvered cymbals in the caresses of some ethereal voices. Indeed, a great track!
Peace will never have been so troubling as on AFTERMATH 2.0 - Archives of Peace. The psybient tale of Aes Dana inhales the strangeness of these nonconformist musical works which seduce due to their capacities to put in symbiosis all these parallel universes which abound within the reach of ears and of eyes but which we not do not hear nor see. I like these ambient rhythms which pound in an organic life and which whispers us to the ear all what escapes our perceptivity. And it's exactly the very great beauty and the story behind AFTERMATH 2.0 - Archives of Peace from Aes Dana.
Sylvain Lupari (May 20th, 2013) ***½**
Available on Ultimae Records Web Site