AIRSCULPTURE: Metal Adjacent (2019)
“For a title offered free, Metal Adjacent has no reason not to land in your CD collection or simply in your things to discover”
1 Metal Adjacent 29:55
(DDL 29:55) (V.F.)
(Ambient, England School)
The last one was Traveling Light. And before this album, there was indeed a period of 18 months between it and the last part of the Vanishing Point trilogy. Fans are worried and wondering about the future of Airsculpture. Adrian Beasley, John Christian and Peter Ruczynski want to be reassuring. The three English musicians had a busy year with activities unrelated to the group. The English trio still exists, and it was present at the famous Awakenings festival this last spring. It was during this period that METAL ADJACENT was incubated in the vaults of AirSculpture. Indeed, seeing that the group had offered nothing since May 2018 (Vanishing Point), the members offer this 30-minute EP completely free of charge on the Airsculpture Bandcamp site. And if you feel like giving a little something, Adrian Beasley, John Christian and Peter Ruczynski direct you to a link to help the homeless in Reading.
An intense layer with a gargantuan organ flavor opens the first measures of Metal Adjacent. We instantly recognize the territories and the musical scents of the English trio. Filaments of reverberations feed this apocalyptic decor enriched by layers of chthonian voices. These first moments remain dark, even if a slow modulation makes move the music with the impulses of the organ and the foggy harmonies of the mellotron. By moments musical, or simply accessory, the mellotron harmonizes its atmospheres with synth pads always imbued with a cathedral vision. The flutes begin to sing around the 8 minutes. The synths multiply the layers whose intensities intersect a ghostly march, frail solos and songs of opalescent flutes. These solos and the muffled impulses are the fertilizer of these ambiences where the clickings of cymbals are like the murmurs of paranoia. A heavy pad of organ returns to set the chthonian pendulums up to date at the same time as a choir whispers a vague incantation. A wooshh storm bickers with the buzzings of the cathedral's organ layers. A fight of dark matter has taken place in these floating twilights from which breathes a line of bass-sequences always uncertain in this mass of black winds. Of pain and misery , the latent rhythm seems to want to stay in its cocoon to finally emerge after the peak of 30 minutes in a Berlin School whose identity is finally stolen by the fiery England School of Airsculpture.
In a 20 minutes of ambiences of a Mephistophelic intensity for a big 10 minutes of fiery and unmistakable electronic rock; I sincerely believe that for a title offered free, METAL ADJACENT has no reason not to land in your CD collection or simply in the things to discover. A title which belongs with the good Airsculpture albums.
Sylvain Lupari (February 6th, 2020) *****
Available at Airsculpture Bandcamp