“The music goes without being noticed and then...Bang! That's how and why one falls in love with the artist and his music”
1 System Reboot 14:25
2 Immuable 14:22
3 Vortex 13:56
4 This Path Has No End 13:13
(DDL 55:56) (V.F.)
(Minimalist Romanian School)
A bomb like Vortex justifies the interest that I have developed during these last years towards the music of Alba Ecstasy! In fact, each Mihail-Adrian Simion album offers something to put on your iPod. Here, the rhythm is pulsating and the envelope, both musical and sonorous, is extremely powerful. Dozens of sequenced keys skip in all directions, while others are doing scissor figures in an aquatic ballet and a group are doing fast walk through a limitless zone, creating a confusion that stagnates the rhythm at a static level and filling a hearing on the verge of ecstasy. The layers and synth lines travel in old and in the most recent Klaus Schulze's tones, if not those of my old friend Edgar. The sound is rich and oozes out of every pore in my listening room. Here is a good 14 minutes of a minimalist EM which seems to have given gas to This Path Has No End. This track is built on the same rhythmic principles, ie active pounding by a jackhammer sequenced in convulsive mode. This bombardment gives all possible liberties to synthesizers to express themselves with great solos, riffs and armadas of FX.
I started in the middle, but what about REALM OF SILENCE? Vortex was the catalyst and This Path Has No End is following in its footsteps, what about the first two titles? I rediscovered System Reboot, as well as the rest of this album a little better. Its rhythm is pulsating with a good line of bass pulsations which pound a linear and stationary structure. The sequencer injects series of sequences as rhythmic as organic with chirps and other vital signals which frame this inert rhythm made of lead. This rhythmic broth begins with an overdose of impulses from the synthesizers. It's used as a base for the various sources of synths whose figures of hang-gliding acrobatics and ectoplasmic lamentations come and go with just enough variation and variance in tones and velocities that the title does not suffer of any length on its 14 minutes and dusts. There are some good solos here, some of which have very Tangerine Dream charms among the sulphurous air attacks of the synths. The musical envelope which surrounds the 4 tracks of this album is rather violent by being sewn with esoteric sonic fibers, creating moving veils full of sounds and cosmic effects. In Immuable, Alba Ecstasy took organic fibers since they are stridulations which come out of the ample aerial movements of this mobile fence. The rhythm is always sharply jerky with impulses jointly spread by the sequencer and the synth. This rhythmic spinning-top spins and turns for a good 10 minutes, when big layers charged with sonorous drizzle dispossess Immutable of its stationary rhythm. These same layers had given birth to it after 2 minutes of procrastination of atmospheric elements that the finale intended to resume. That's how and why one falls in love with the artist and his music.
Sylvain Lupari (September 1st, 2020) ***¾**
Available at Alba Ecstasy Bandcamp