“Slower than basically animated, Frozen Thoughts travels between intensity and drama”
1 Mind Core 16:40 2 Another Blood Wolf Moon Story 18:01 3 Between the Lines 6:15 4 A Fugitive Moment 14:55 Alba Ecstasy Music
(DDL 55:51) (V.F.) (Ambient Berlin School)
Yep, 2019! And I had so much fun analyzing Alba Ecstasy's music last year that I decided to continue the experiment. The reviews will be shorter since we know the subject all ears filled. First download of 2019, FROZEN THOUGHTS is equipped of 3 long titles that have the improvisational perfume of the Roumanian School with minimalist structures loaded of an entire arsenal of synths and sequencers. The structures stick to the identity of the album with titles which seem frozen in minimalist membranes evolving as a slow awakening. The sequences are limpid with a big L, causing our mind to drift into Mirage's boundaries. A beautiful album more ambient than rhythmic, FROZEN THOUGHTS travels between intensity and drama in a nice sound envelope where the sequences are like these verses in long poems stigmatized in the cold.
Mind Core is in the tradition of Klaus Schulze's Berlin School of the golden years with chloroformed layers whose anesthetic breezes cover a harmless and floating movement of the sequencer. The breezes roll in loops, like clouds of ether which repress at an unknown point. Tears of synth flow in the form of complaints or lifeless solos. It's these elements that makes Klaus Schulze the most, Blackdance or Picture Music periods, and which dose the ambient intensity level of Mind Core. The movements of these fog banks stimulate a rhythm of fog while the sequencer activates more and more its muted approach, drawing floating axes which crumble into resonant filaments in order to create an electro-magnetic storm. A quiet title! Another Blood Wolf Moon Story also begins with a flavor of ambient music, but more nebulous. Hollow breezes and others of crystal fill an introduction where a synth cries in a resonance area. Solos are tender and romantic. They blow a melancholy with tremolo in the airs and in the breezes of the atmospheres. These solos are majestic with strident songs that are at the doors of an ectoplasmic universe. The sequencer activate itself before the 3 minutes. There is uncertainty in the hopping of the keys which are fat, resonant and juicy, creating an approach as evasive as a game of cat and mouse with those hesitant steps which seem to stumble into this illusion of cosmic universe. But no matter, it hides a clear velocity in the evolution of Another Blood Wolf Moon Story which shows more and more its intensity. The jingling which get in are the sign that the percussions are coming. Under an increased embellishment of synth solos, they hesitate before reorganizing in a pulsating rhythm which cannot tie the music to its speed which flirts with a morphic techno. The solos remain haunting and remind us of theft of witches' flight whose cries burst out with their aerial acrobatics. Without ever really taking off, the rhythm reflects on its options which always remain at the peak of indecision. In doing so, the music recreates a wave of intensity on a structure which puts to the fore a synth which takes its revenge on its excessive absence in the album Spells. Between the Lines keeps the music of FROZEN THOUGHTS in its vegetative state. A rumble of machine, which arrives to us by oscillating waves, synth pads, which also breathe by haunting solos and sound effects of a universe of perdition, anchor the 6 minutes of an always intense music at the level of its element moods. The sequencer is more powerful in the opening of A Fugitive Moment. Its keys jump incisively, carving large loops which climb the mountains of Berlin School. Intense and ambient, this last title of FROZEN THOUGHTS consolidates this feeling of long phases of improvisations which structure its long titles. Here, the synth is active with jerky whispers whereas the orchestral mist always feeds of intensity. Cosmic effects and threatening waves nourish the scenery of this rhythmic rise which gets more musical when a bass line and percussions are grafted to this symphony on the meditative beauties of nothingness. Slower than basically animated, A Fugitive Moment ranks in these tracks which nourished the principles of Klaus Schulze's In Blue album and whose imprints are really rooted in this debut album of Alba Ecstasy in 2019.
Sylvain Lupari (February 26th, 2019) ***½**
Available at Alba Ecstasy's Bandcamp
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