“Welcome to the ambient world of Arcane cause Black Knight is deeply ambient, dark and somehow intriguing”
1 Black Knight 1 5:44 2 Black Knight 2 6:48 3 Black Knight 3 5:56 4 Black Knight 4 6:25 Paul Lawler Music
(DDL 24:53) (V.F.) (Deep ambient Cosmic music) Paul Lawler is having fun with his new electronic toys. And it's us, fans of Arcane and of these inexplicable movements of EM, that benefit the most of that. BLACK KNIGHT is already the 4th E.P. of Arcane in 2015. And this time, the adventure is different! Paul Lawler brings us in black territories. In ambient corridors where the music fits marvelously to this picture which serves as artwork on the Bandcamp page of the English artist. We often say that some answers of the cosmos are at the bottom of our oceans. This is what we are suppose to imagine when mooing of whales, singings of sea stars and chirping of terns open Black Knight 1. In fact, this first track which opens the four chapters of BLACK KNIGHT is a kind of an oceanic immersion coated by celestial voices which roam in the abyssal depths. Little by little the track abandons the vestiges of the fabulous M'Ocean from Michael Stearns in order to borrow a cosmic bend where tears of violin caress a load of electronic chirping and where this oceanic choir raises its ambient harmonies of a notch to compete with a kind of digital dialect. Are we in cosmos or inside an electronic machine? This dialect which Black Knight 2. But here, the shadows of the muffled pulsations weave an aura as much nebulous than dark. Congealing even a redeeming walking, a little as the slow beatings of a cosmonaut who little by little discovers a universe as magnetic as hostile. Layers of voices are always so present as well as some nice cosmic orchestrations which lull a thick cloud of tones. Some are from a computer world and others are interstellar. Our senses float in space. We go adrift throughout the slow music movements of BLACK KNIGHT. Electronic chirping, electronic dialect and electronic effects fill the introduction of Black Knight 3 where the muted reverberations of the pulsations chase away little by little these noises in order to settle an astral serenity. We are at the point where the space is the most present with great layers of voices and tears of synth which throw spectral harmonies on an ambient rhythm which took root in the echoes of the pulsations. Black Knight 4 brings us back to light years with a heavy intro clogged of heterogeneous tones, electronic noises, violin layers and voices as black as those in the Phaedra years. The pulsatory rhythm crumbles the echo of the pulsations in a long rosary of which the soft movement of jerks find refugee in a finale rather musical.
One of the big strengths of BLACK KNIGHT is this wall of tones from beyond the world-and this wall of layers filled with mystic choruses which push us more and more towards a cosmic oblivion. The other one is this concern of detail that Paul Lawler shows so to immerse us in this wall. It's dark, black and wrapping. Intriguing and intimidating as an excursion, that we imagine, in cosmos. But are we really in cosmos? Sylvain Lupari (December 2nd, 2015) *****
Available at Paul Lawler Bandcamp