“Crystal Waters is a sonic lake of serenity which floats on the iridescent ambiences and the poignant morphic moods à la Brian Eno and Juta Takahashi”
1 Crystal Sea 14:56
2 Crystal River 19:12
3 Crystal Lake 16:21
4 Crystal Rain 17:46
5 Crystal Tears 7:49
(DDL 76:05) (V.F.)
(Ambient Music)
Curious I was to hear the mystic second half of Mystical Light. Nevertheless, André Willms had told me that his music was rather quiet. A kind of relaxation EM with a New Age sauce. I insisted and he sent me his music. Hem...yes! We are definitively beyond the borders of Beyond the Horizon. CRYSTAL WATERS is a real small jewel of serenity which floats on the iridescent ambiences and some poignant morphic moods à la Brian Eno and Juta Takahashi.
From the outset, Crystal Sea establishes the foundations of the album with very musical synth waves which float such as slow surrealist water waves rolling in a blue cosmos. The movement is slow. Very slow, with elastic strata which mix voices and seraphic harmonies. These strata are interlaced in a serial approach with ambient movements of which the distant lullabies caress my ear with some sibylline sonic airs of Ave Maria. It's of a tenderness to make the angels cry. And moreover we can hear their tears falling from heavens like crystal's prisms falling, ringing and bouncing in these slow sighs of mellotron and of their gliding wings of snivelling violins. Other chords, less crystal clear, are falling and resound in our ears with an approach of ephemeral melodious which get lost in this intense meshing of angelic strata. Crystal River brings its lot of nuances with synth pads which settle delicately on this canvas of sonic silk that is the ambiospherical sound pattern of the album. The movement is denser, more orchestral. We can hear a synth like escaped from it and snivel in solo. It's rather intense and very striking. I hear the melancholy of Vangelis, here as in Crystal Lake, on this slow morphic movement where cavort fine sound prisms, just like drops of pearls which sing on the edge full of dew. No matter the minutes that these synth layers to angelic voices float in our ears, we appreciate constantly the deep serenity. If Crystal Lake inhales the blackness of its gaps, with Vangelis kind of synth lines which float with seraphic voices and undulate like long quiet winds on a black surface, Crystal Rain offers a clearly more translucent approach with fine fragments of melody which ring as in an oniric carousel. Crystal Tears is more ethereal, like if it could be possible, with a clearly more beatific approach where the voices are melting in the masses of strata as so much peaceful as magnanimous.
CRYSTAL WATERS is a hyper quiet album where Astral Cookies like playing with the emotions by barding his music of effects of angelic voices to make raise the bones of our spinal. Since I discovered it, it shines my nights of bright music. It's as much sensitive and deeply poignant as that maybe quiet, and believe me, it's very quiet. By moment, I have the impression to hear the angelus with choirs of young Christians who are going be devoured by the gods. André Willms offers more than music 76 minutes of relaxation where the synth waves roll in serial cascades, a little as if one hears the same music with fine nuances in melodies. But we don't realize it because either we sleep... or we dream.
Sylvain Lupari (November 15th, 2013) ***½**
Available at Astral Cookies Bandcamp