“Unwound is an audacious sonic experiment which deepens the bases of Derwish”
1 Mode I 8:00 2 Mode II 6:20 3 Mode III 6:20 4 Mode IV 8:34 5 Mode V 7:08 6 Mode VI 6:56 7 Mode VII 11:58
(DDL 55:16) (V.F.)
(Experimental ambient EM)
UNWOUND is for those who have devoured Derwish. In fact, it's this album, but boned! Derwish seen again and remixed by Ian Boddy who, track by track, removed all rhythmic structures, letting glide some sulphurous spectral lamentations coming from string instruments and wind instruments which team up and merge in an atonal musical universe of which the intensity hunts the intense guitar of Markus Reuter.
From the first mislaid chords of Mode I we guess the skeleton of Derwish with this guitar à la Fripp which switches shape for a set of violins and of its ochred and metallic breaths. No rhythms, only those violin flights which intertwine with soft loops of guitar amply dissected and devoid of its primary identity. Uninteresting? Not completely. Pushing the sonic exploration and the exploitation of tones to its maximum, Ian Boddy succeeds to create a surrealist mood where all kind of tones get shape in a timeless atmosphere with exhausted beats, as on Mode II and Mode VI, where the tones of strident flutes congeal the harmonies in a shrill musical pewter. Where totally atonal movements are floating above some soft oscillations and overfly lazily a darkness moved by oblong pulsations, like on Mode III and Mode IV. With its soft fluty approach, of which the echo of the sound reflections goes lost in the lamentations of a guitar that Reuter strongly pinched the strings, Mode V is doubtless the most beautiful track here. The most accessible too, because very sensitive with its oscillating stridencies which evaporate in the tearing of a solitary guitar whom we guess with difficulty, so much the tones adopt a sound acuteness to make burst a crystal of renown. Mode VII ends the album with a serial choir where the choruses get graft to the weak fluctuations, deviating into obscure corridors of incantations where the lack of movement stays the main agony of a Spiral Manœuvre survivor, from the Derwish album.
In all honesty, UNWOUND is not synonymic of commercial music. It's an audacious sonic experiment, available only in a download format, which deepens the bases of Derwish. But a ghostly one to which we removed all of its rhythmic structures and turn them into 6 motionless segments as much spectral as metallic. It's a kind of industrial ambient music which leans on slow and often shrill oscillations and where Ian Boddy weaves the paintings of his imagination beyond the structural limits of Derwish. It's an intimist introspection which feeds very well the pond of experiment of the sound structures to the similar themes. Something that the DiN Label proposes since its creation. An album for curious ears and for open minds!
Sylvain Lupari (January 27th, 2009) ***½**
Available at DiN Bandcamp