“Alluste invites us to discover a last album always more convincing with a better-defined vision of the Chris Franke style”
1 Engines of Creation 8:29
2 Dark Recollections 8:02
3 Mountain Dew 11:38
4 Way up north 7:07
5 Freya 8:28
6 A Gathering of Imaginations 7:33
7 The Cosmic Path 7:05
8 Sereneia 5:25
9 Runny 6:34
(DDL 70:24) (V.F.)
(New Berlin School)
A shadow of a bass stretches a heat bordering on paradise when synthesized wavelets add a sky-blue color to the introduction of Engines of Creation. A line of bass sequences makes a gentle rhythm which cavorts in ethereal wadding, waiting for a melody that will come through the keys of a very romantic keyboard. One adds electronic drum and hop; the music flows like a soft slow tempo where the sequenced balls cavort. Increasingly adept at creating melodies other than on the sequencer, Alluste offers with his 19th album another musical rendezvous always very comfortable for our ears. Rhythms and melodies that intertwine their slightly different in a texture of melancholy so unique to the signature of Piero Monachello, the 70 minutes that roll on the counter of IN THE DEEP BLUE are moments of magic that tame without difficulty. Tinted with a darker robe, Dark Recollections proposes a more fluid rhythm, even spasmodic, which interferes between our ears with a swarm of sequenced keys that jump on the spot. If this first movement is static, another movement of the sequencer, more leading this one, forges an ostinato rhythm which goes up and goes down without never reaching its goal, but which gives a nice fluidity to a very Berlin School movement. This rhythmic diversity is conducive to hybrid to synths with hybrid tones and a melodious approach of a keyboard that makes roll its arpeggios in vapors of Tangerine Dream, Jive period. Very melodious and oneiric, Freya is a little in the same genre with a more ethereal structure. We find these vapors everywhere in this album that flirts between Le Parc and Underwater Sunlight but also with the very melodious Pacific Coast Highway from Chris Franke.
And even if the lines of rhythms abound in a relative complexity, our ears adjust quite well to these intersecting lines of rhythms like in Mountain Dew. Way up North offers a more cosmic vision with effects that are in the mood. The rhythm always remains in this junction tissue between a swarm of limpid sequences that are thrown such as a jet of a syringe into water and a line of bass sequences that gambols without apparent authority in a nebulous approach. A Gathering of Imaginations follows with a more fluid structure in the Berlin School style. The sequences hop by flirting with their shadows to take a slightly different tangent in the midway. The Cosmic Path is one of the most interesting titles on this album with its rhythmic structure that draws a cosmic race. The sequencer is nervous, and the jumping balls don't hesitate to jump in an indiscipline which finds its cohesion when a line of more independent rhythm forges a rising movement of the Berlin School. Our ears under the spell, another line of rhythm, harmonic this time, comes to plant us this desire to listen again The Cosmic Path. IPod direction! Sereneia is a beautiful electronic ballad tinged with Piero Monachello's romance. It's very beautiful! The best is for the end with the excellent Runny that will freeze you an earworm in the soul. Its structure is stationary with sequences that flutter in a progressive cosmic ballet. Two lines of harmonies, one of which will remain engraved on the eardrums for hours to come, are rubbed between felted knocks of percussions made in cotton fibers.
Comfortable in this style always very ear-catching since Constellation, Alluste invites us to discover a last album always more convincing with a better-defined vision of the Chris Franke style. IN THE DEEP BLUE breathes the depth of its title with a very musical album where each title is like a march leading us to a final that gives us the taste to play it again. There are very strong titles on this album!
Sylvain Lupari (December 2nd, 2019) *****
Available at Alluste Bandcamp