“Everything is so beautiful and lyrical on Legacy and this is why this album needs to be approached with an open mind”
1 The Tunnel 3:23 2 On Track 4:04 3 Accelerant 6:21 4 The Hour Appointed 5:00 5 Septimal Laws 4:25 6 Fields of Neptune 5:12 7 The Outer Shell 8:17 8 Gravity Core 5:46 9 Inner Guidance 7:11 10 Closing In 1:40 Spotted Peccary|SPM-1605 (CD/DDL 51:20) (V.F.) (Ambient, Électronica, Berlin School)
It's with patience that we discover beautiful jewels. Some very beautiful music! As this last album of Between Interval which took a long time to come after the attractive and enigmatic The Edge of a Fairytale released in 2009. And to fill this wait, let's say that Stefan Strand returns in a very great shape after a silence of very close to 8 years from the radar music. And his comeback sounds very pleasant, even if I needed at least 5 good listening before falling under its charms.
Rather furtive bass pulsations are piercing an opaque wall of cerulean droning. Percussive effects get in at the same time that a line of sequences loosens an oscillating stroboscopic approach. These combined elements forge one dense rhythmic skeleton among which the knocks and the ill-assorted jingles smother the rather organic tone of the sequences. This motionless rhythm of The Tunnel progresses without ever overflowing in an impermeable atmosphere sewn by a shower of synth lines which shapes a sound panorama as charming as intriguing. Dusts and mists of The Tunnel are absorbed by the splendid On Track and its charmingly lascivious structure of rhythm which skips between a delicate drumming of sequences and percussive jingles. A very evasive melody lies down there, spreading its melancholy in a sound texture where the style Dub and Ambient House looks for a hidden recess in order to explode. The approach remains however taciturn and quietly the listener goes adrift towards Accelerant and its oscillating swell which spins in a tubular corridor. Scattered keyboard chords trace a melody dreamy and nostalgic, like in On Track, but more in an ambient ethereal mode. They and weave a delicious contrast between its structure of rhythm. These melodic pearls fall like sonic tears throughout the soundscapes, like in the very ambient and meditative The Hour Appointed of which the multiple percussive effects and the reverberations draw a gloomy vibe. Septimal Laws, just like the superb Gravity Core, brings us to the level of the snoring ambient and minimalist rhythms of Plastikman in the time of his Consumed. Two simply delicious titles of Techno ambient!
Fields of Neptune gets between our ears with good electronic effects and an immense sonic wave which metamorphose into a heavy awning compacted of sibylline songs of steel. A very Berlin School sequence signs an unstable rhythmic which circulates like a vertical auger in an encircling veil of a very striking sonic blue. Now, each title is linked, giving a mix of styles rather difficult to buy from the first listening. Like this very ambient and restful The Outer Shell which nests between two opposites in a delicious cosmic mood. Stefan Strand slides these effects of percussions and piles the synth layers which have so many colors as elements of distant voices, giving so many reliefs to the soundscapes. Gravity Core is simply great in its suit of Richie Hawtin. Its snoring sequences resound up to the frontiers of Inner Guidance, another rather Berlin School title in the vein of Fields of Neptune but with a more glaucous decoration in particular because of the resonance effects and the bass pulsations. Slowly this limping rhythm melts in a decoration of ambiences and murmurs to join the furrows of the winds of a space shuttle which derives in a cosmos where lie sonic hoops and their radiances which crumble off in the black.
I have to admit that I needed a very attentive listening before appreciating this last opus of Between Interval. Nevertheless, everything is beautiful and rather lyrical! I imagine that the avalanche of styles, which melt themselves in panoramas sometimes cosmic and sometimes earthly, can leave the fans of a kind or the other one on their appetites. As I, with the effects Plastikman. But in the course of listening, we discover a surprising album which I appreciate even more in every new listening. I hope now not to have to wait another 8 years for a suite to LEGACY…
Sylvain Lupari (May 27th, 2017) *****
Available at Spotted Peccary Bandcamp