“Anchored in the latest panoramas of Moonquake, the music here travels between its lunar landscapes and its impulses for Berlin School and Psybient”
1 Musica Universalis 13:12
2 Harmonic Spheres 4:57
3 Sonic Pythagoras 13:36
4 Interplanetary Polyphony 10:04
(CD-r/DDL 41:49) (V.F.)
(Ambient)
Geometry set to music! It's in an artwork as simple as its contents that Bouvetøya presents us his last album, distributed in CD-r and in download by the label SynGate and its Wave division. Anchored in the latest panoramas of Moonquake, the music of GEOMETRIUM travels between its lunar landscapes and its impulses for the Berlin School model while enjoying a crack between the two worlds to flirt with the Psybient vibes. It's an album I would have seen in the Luna division, considering its progressive ambient approach whose dust forms downs tempo more or less convincing.
Electronic effects coming from beyond the grave release GEOMETRIUM from silence. An elongated nasal wave with Farfisa's tones meanders this sound horizon, which has become drunk of ether. Early on, she subdivided her effect with a vocal wave without a voice, except for a distant moan that gave her a spectral appearance. It's in a landscape of gloomy atmospheres, from Klaus Schulze's Picture Music circa, that Musica Universalis introduces us to an album that left me on my appetite A shadow of bass drops its first breath a little after the 3 minutes. It's also after one of these breaths that beats intensify a rhythmic presence which is accompanied by the language of cymbals. The wave becomes more musical and gets radiating with impulses that enrich its scope and clings more to a down-tempo in a psybient panorama, like the worlds of Solar Fields and Carbon Based Lifeforms, rather than Berlin School. A line of riffs and harmonies very spaced from the synth give more relief to this structure which flirts even in its last third with a short more animated phase. Thus is Musica Universalis, and so are Harmonic Spheres, which adopts substantially the same pattern without the rhythmic hatching, and Sonic Pythagoras which is undoubtedly the best track here.
A good title, intense as in the good moments of Moonquake, its first 6 minutes are woven in reverie, with tingling arpeggios whose echo draws a beautiful lunar melody. Subsequently, a spasmodic line puts down a nervous and static structure that serves like a base for the synth and its filiform and twisted decorations. A line of oscillations joins the rhythm which also deploys a line of nervous sequences. This aimless structure clings to a line of bass sequences, helping Sonic Pythagoras to join a more Berlin School structure that is constantly searching for its landmarks in the Psybient realm. And it's in this vision of static rhythm that the title scatters its last minutes by stretching a little too much. But the opening is great! Interplanetary Polyphony ends the album with a long corridor of atmospheres borrowed from the remains of Musica Universalis. And contrary to this title, there will be no rhythm here. Just rich atmospheres of these vintage tones where Klaus Schulze's synths had that little nasal side that gave them such a distinct tone. A sweet melody, a bit lugubrious but still quite effective, is formed within this multiplicity of sound waves. Giving this little push for GEOMETRIUM to rise to the bar of acceptable albums. There was better, as there was worse! Both for Michael Jones and the spheres of EM in general.
Sylvain Lupari (October 28th, 2019) *****
Available at SynGate Bandcamp