“This is a good album that will please all those who took their foot at the turn of the 70's with inspired music that brought us where we did not yet know the territories”
1 Infinity Halt (46:30)
2 Vanishing Point (46:48)
3 The Main and Great Proposition (16:32)
(CD/DDL 109:50)
(Berlin School, England School)
AirSculpture's music is the perfect example of a music that must be listened to and not heard. Otherwise, we miss all kinds of details. Like this opening of Infinity Halt and its delicate pulsating movement that escapes from the magnetism of an astral chorale. If piano notes, rather nostalgic, accompany these seraphic chants, the tranquility of the movement envelops us with a pair of sleeping wings. We must not fight against these moments since a series of light beats weld our senses on hold. The movement deviates and a fluty breeze embraces a rhythmic tranquility that is lost in ether fields just before the 15th minute mark. Infinity Halt then falls into an intense ambiosonic phase where winds roar and roar in a sort of magnetic storm with arrangements that will remind some of these claustrophobic atmospheres in Alan Parsons Project's The Fall of the House of Usher. For about fifteen minutes, this phase of ambiances for tortured spirits leads to a good structure of ascending rhythm loops whose echoes as well as adjacent sequences forge a continuous minimalist structure which jumps with its imperfect and jerky jumps in these silky sheets of ether. Synth larvae give birth to beautiful seraphic harmonies that sound like those distant perfumes of Tangerine Dream, Baumann era, while the rhythm accentuates speed and power towards a tasty hypnosis finale with technoid pulsations and percussion effects that reminds us why we must listen, and not hear, the charms of AirSculpture. After several months of delay, here is the long-awaited continuation of Vanishing Point Vol.1! VANISHING POINT Vol.2 follows a little the beginnings of his little brother of sounds with another collection of titles performed live. But this time it's only on one concert given only in the USA as part of the Gathering Concerts of November 2011. And unlike the first volume, this VANISHING POINT Vol.2 operates on 2 very long titles that always show how Adrian Beasley, John Christian and Pete Ruczynski are still on the same page year after year. We warm up the equipment and we put the audience, very enthusiastic by the way, in the atmospheres with long introductions stuffed of electronic tones that are the prerogative of long titles improvised.
But the engines are already heated for Vanishing Point, probably the most consistent title of the English trio I heard. The music is uprooted from these tones, as well as a thrust of hollow winds and glaucous pulsations, in order to hone chords that sound like those uncertain rhythm figures à la Klaus Schulze in his contemporary era. Tears of synth whine with elegant ethereal veils while the structure staggers still. Knocks are added. They accentuate the gap between an ambient rhythm structure and a more pugnacious one. This is how the other 40 minutes of Vanishing Point take place, which has been evolving for a long time, with a relative combativeness in its evolution. The synth layers are like those mirages of a cloud waltz while the trio continually carries other sequences that sparkle, hop and hobble in a huge magnetizing sonic montage. The structure becomes more vintage around the 23 minutes with a very good movement of the sequencer that perfectly shifts the measure between each step, bringing Vanishing Point to a final as exciting as Infinity Halt. The wait was worth it! As long as we love these long hypnotics and evolutive structures ... and that we are a fan of AirSculpture.
The Main and Great Proposition outlaws the principle of intro woven into the indecisive atmospheres and interstices of EM instruments! The rhythm takes off as soon as a jumping sequence is able to get rid of its solitary leap to spread a line of resonant sequences and pulsations that structure its rather atypical rhythm. The music plunges into the heaviness of a good electronic rock of the England School style and is wrapped in good effects and no less splendid synth solos that crown this rhythmic woven in disorder. From the very big AirSculpture that concludes a very good album that will please all those who took their foot at the turn of the 70's with inspired music that brought us where we did not yet know the territories.
Sylvain Lupari (January 24th, 2017) *****
Available on AirSculpture Bandcamp