“This is a true little bombshell of charms and daring, this collection of 8 tracks offers a wide range of music styles from Psybient moods to solid New Berlin School”
1 Diamond Defects 6:26 2 Breaking Symmetries 11:07 3 Fundamental Symmetries 5:46 4 Runchana Theme (album version) 6:24 5 Secrets of Matter 6:16 6 Quantum Atmospheres 9:43 7 Zone of Influence 6:37 8 Time Crystal 6:35 Alluste Music
(DDL 58:57) (V.F.) (Retro & Neo Berlin Schools)
Who follows Alluste's career since the release of Constellation in 2008 already had knowledge of the immense potential of the Italian synthesist. And from album to album, this intuition became a certainty. Evolving constantly within its parameters; at the level of time, knowledge and equipment, Piero Monachello offered albums where beautiful musical pearls slept. If Tunnels in Time-Space stigmatized his place among the elite of EM, QUATUM ATMOSPHERES goes even further by becoming the absolute album of Alluste. A true little bombshell of charms and daring, this collection of 8 tracks offers a wide range of music with Piero Monachello as a weaver of ear worm who plunges into the Psybient moods while keeping the course on the New Berlin School that he knew brilliantly how to preserve it in an evolutionary approach.
A series of fragile arpeggios which tinkle with an eroded glass tone opens up the delightful ambient ballet of Diamond Defects. Imperfect, this sequence-based ritornello spins in staggering. Attempting to cling to the mists, she evaporates candidly to make room for a melody that turns into solos of a synth as melancholy as those notes that have already replaced her. Despite an increasingly steady pulse that has been grafted in it slyly, the structure of Diamond Defects remains ambient, preferring to enrich our ears than to move our legs. Ambient and melodiously mysterious, Breaking Symmetries is my first blow-of-heart! The nebulous haze is at the rendezvous. And its mysterious breezes cover an intro where is waking up a synth line woven in fine astral undulations. Noises light out a psybient ambience while a muffled pulsation animates a slow and constant rhythm. Felted percussive effects are popping up everywhere, while another line emerges with some delicious stellar kickings. It's like seeing the signs of the Zodiac clashing in the interstellar nothingness. The echo responds to this rhythm that needs all these effects to survive. The mist thickens, becoming almost lyrical, while clatters get in and another line of sequences stigmatizes a rhythmic melody which rings with resonant clarity in the seraphic thin lines of voices. A fascinating title inspired by this fusion Psybient and Berlin School from the Belgian School's recent outbreak.
It's in this creative sonic scheme that the 59 minutes of QUATUM ATMOSPHERES take place. If the title of this album suggests any link with the last direction of Tangerine Dream, it's with Fundamental Symmetries that we notice it first. The sequencer adopts these delicious dislocated movements of Chris Franke and the percussions structure an electronic rock very close to the last years of the Dream. Ditto for Runchana Theme (Album Version), an ambient ballad that was offered on free download is laying on a nest of sequences teeming with static spasms. This melodious approach is full of effects and riffs that cannot deny the influences of Tangerine Dream on Piero Monachello. Secrets of Matter stays in the same vein with a ballet of slowly spinning sequences, while the melody comes and goes in an approach reminiscent of the mysteries of Wavelength or Near Dark. The title-track is my second favorite with frivolous sequences that dance taps in the warm resonance of a line of bass pulsations. Voice effects add a surreal dimension to this fascinating rhythmic structure that trades its indiscipline for a more melodic approach. The synth pours harmonic solos with a hoarse tint, adding to mysticism in a fairly Vangelis structural setting. The movement is developing its 10 minutes with an evolutionary approach, including a more incisive pace that plays sneakily with our appetite for a creative sequencer. And the Italian synth wizard responds clearly to this appetite. Two lines intersect their rhythmic visions under a sky cracked by lines with metallic tones, the galloping and bouncing cadence of Zone of Influence is in the purest Alluste tradition. Time Crystal finishes his quite solid last opus in a very Moonbooter mold. The melody is catchy and poignant. She weaves her imposing earworm on an ambient Techno structure with a breathtaking finale. Yes, this is Alluste's best album who has no fear of getting out of his comfort zone with this QUATUM ATMOSPHERES.
Sylvain Lupari (December 5th, 2018) ****¼*
Available on Alluste Bandcamp