“A little jewel of tenderness which will accompany you to your secret peace of mind”
1 Immerse 13:03 2 Earthen 11:45 3 Pulseforms 10:25 4 Source 13:08 5 Helios 12:52 6 Forest 7:42 Alpha Wave Movement Music
(CD & DDL 58:09) (V.F.) (Ambient and celestial music)
I mentioned it quite often; Alpha Wave Movement is one of the best-kept secrets of the contemporary MÉ. Gregory Kyryluk, the man behind AWM, raises proudly his artistic independence, album after album, by navigating from a style to another and/or from a project to another without ever taking root. This time he makes a small exception by drawing farther that he did with System A and by offering a beautiful album of an even more cosmic, an even more contemplative EM.
And that begins with this long breeze which rises from the borders of the oblivion. The movement is slow. Very slow. Small strands extricate themselves from these oblong curves and infuse the delicate musicality of Immerse by glittering of contrasting tones. Small carillons ring. One would say some stars which sparkle. And their myriad adopts the shape of a soft morphic lullaby which is taken by these ethereal tablecloths which sweep the horizons, such the big eye of a lighthouse guiding the travelers in the cosmos. And when the movement unties its shadows which hum like astral singings, a delicate movement of ambient rhythm falls from the nothingness like these leaves taken by the winds which delicately make them waltz towards the ground. Immerse caresses our ears of this first movement of astral rhythm which, once from time to time, shakes the great quietude of EARTHEN. This vertical movement of saccade is magnetizing (I hear this mass of snow that Tomita sculpted in his famous Snowflake are Dancing, but in a clearly more ethereal approach) and spins in layers of seraphic voices. Another livelier movement makes drum some felted keys which dance in countercurrent, drawing two lines of antithetical rhythms which struggle in these fluty voices as much dreamlike as these thick clouds of carillons which always tinkle for this kind morphic and cosmic lullaby. The title-track exploits also these carillons. They shine and sparkle, spinning as feathers in a mass of synth lines among which the songs and their contrasts float and conceal the resonances of the isolated percussions. This vast movement of somber serenity which blows on the introduction of Earthen is pushed by the implosions of a bass line. Their weak and scattered beatings bring the title-track to another level. Towards a beautiful and very morphic down-tempo where the short lines of sequences make sparkling the keys which wave in the same speed that these dark breezes where always burst these lost percussions. And this rhythm isn't anymore. The arrangements are as delicate as the caresses of the angels. And quite quietly our ears cannot avoid any kinds of parallels to make between this music and that of Steve Roach, in Structures from Silence, nor moreover the very celestial approach of Ray Lynch in The Sky of Mind. Between New Age and the nebulous world of esotericism; AWM exploits marvelously the corridors of serenity. Everything is soft and relatively quiet, even with rhythms which sparkle and climb some timeless tops as in Pulseforms. If the sonic decoration and the bulwarks of ambiences stay in the same envelope of quietude, the pulse is finely more jerky with a line of rhythm and its dusts which climb the territory of celestial bodies. And then comes the quietest moments of the album. If Source and Helios exchange their long moments of cosmic serenity with their contrasts, Forest brings us closer from our home with another meditative phase where breathes the green life.
Filled with quiet rhythms, with celestial and profoundly immersive atmospheres, EARTHEN is a small jewel of tenderness which wraps our senses of a delicate fusion between the soft movements of some very serene rhythms and the enveloping synth veils where the voices and the breezes are transporting those carillons and their lunar melodies in constant gestation through the cosmic corridors. It's an album which finds the charms of his magnetism the eyes riveted or in the sky, by a hot starry night, or by a beautiful uncertain morning the look lost in the soft flows of a peaceful river. Let's say that it's the ideal companion for a peaceful introspection where the beauties are everywhere around our ears.
Sylvain Lupari (June 8th, 2015) ***¾**
Available at Harmonic Resonance Recordings Bandcamp