“An ambitious project requires music to match! Albeit hard to tame from start to end, this album brings you in places you never put your ears on”
CD1 (71:48)
1 Im Staub der Sterne 4:40
2 Eolomea 7:14
3 Zeit der Sternschnuppen 9:33
4 Sperling (live) 6:50
5 Sternendroge Tyrsolen (live) 8:16
6 Kosmonautin 15:24
7 Reiseziel Mond 9:37
BONUS TRACKS
8 Der Aetherophonist (live) 4:00
9 Spiegelkabinett 6:11
CD2 (74:48)
10 Die Stimme der Unendlichkeit
9:44
11 Signale 6:16
12 Der schweigende Stern 7:10
13 Ypsilon Ypsilon 6:13
14 Die Zusammenkunft (live) 5:27
15 Weltraumfahrer 6:30
16 Spiegelteleskop 7:09
BONUS TRACKS
17 Jung 7:56
18 Ypsilon Ypsilon (live) 6:01
19 Reiseziel Mond (live) 12:19
(2CD-R/DDL 146:36) (V.F.)
(Ambient, Cosmic Rock, Psybient)
Another prolific artist in 2020 was undoubtedly Michael Brückner who produced 6 albums, including 2 double ones. REISEZIEL MOND (Destination Moon) is a second album with Detlev Everling, the other being the sublime Sparrows in 2014. The starting point belongs to Detlev who invited Michael to take part in an outdoor show last summer. An umpteenth event and album highlighting the 50 years of Apollo 11! REISEZIEL MOND was recorded as part of this show and a big project that was half realized. This concert was presented in July 2019 on the roof of the observatory in Rodewisch, a small town in Saxony in East Germany. Filmmaker Matthias Ditscherlein planned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing by showing the documentary on Neil Armstrong; First Man. The music and the arrangements were designed by the German duo. The whole thing was done not without problems! First, copyright issues for the documentary and titles chosen by the duo, and technical difficulties, mostly linked to the fragility of the Theremin, came to undermine the project. The duo had to adjust and compose new titles in record time that would adapt to a new vision of the filmmaker. To cut short this incredible story, Everling & Brückner decided to re-record the music in the studio for the needs of this album. Hence this mixture and a skillful mix between the titles played in concert and those recorded in studio. An ambitious project requires music to match! You see me coming… REISEZIEL MOND is a splendid album which requires some listening in order to become familiar with a sound fauna, imagined in a whole other dimension, and a good open-mindedness in order to combine our imagination with the visions of space travel in music of the two authors. And in the end, you will also have these chills in front of the crescendo climbs of the atmospheres linked to the album.
Beginning with NASA style of telecommunications effects, Im Staub der Sterne offers a rather realistic start to an Apollo 11 takeoff. It almost flirts with Software! Early, the chants of cosmic mermaids and the lunar orchestrations surround the title where already voice effects haunt the cosmonauts on board. Wooshh and wiishh join cosmic violins which elaborate elegant waltzes with the oblivion while flooding our ears with a mass of moving sounds. Eolomea, where beauty resides in its ersatz, follows with its tinkling and then its piano notes lost in the den of emptiness. A flute emerges from this murky atmosphere where the Theremin draws spectral arches. The ambience is woven of composite sound materials with Cacophonator effects that fill our ears as much as the spaces per square inch. Orchestrations and synth lines with timbre as unique as a fusion with the Theremin also dominate this setting, injecting a dose of musicality. The presence of the flute perfumes the airs of the title, as well as the music in general of the album. The jinglings end up uniting and creating a beautiful ambient melody which chimes in orchestral impulses where we find this lost piano in the introduction. Synth and Theremin unite to dilute this confusion of tones and offer a very good cinematographic vision to Eolomea and at the opening high in tonal colors of REISEZIEL MOND. Still wrapped in this dreamy vision, Zeit der Sternschnuppen drifts like a silent mass in the cosmos. Its road to the stars is filled with filaments of harmonies, of semblance of riffs and of guitar chords, or stringed instruments, and of other sounds fractured in an absence of homogeneity. A rather timid rhythmic first framework begins to beat silently. Looks like a Blues Jazz in a very embryonic state clinging to a stray bassline to solidify its survival. Without expecting it, percussions fall at the dawn of the 5 minutes. Zeit der Sternschnuppen becomes a good down-tempo with a suave night saxophone sound as melodic cradle.
Subtly increasing the pace, the rhythm explodes a little more in the opening of Sperling (live) and its psychotronic post-modern atmosphere. In fact, the sound effects which coat an always fragile rhythm give an envelope of psybient to a rhythm flirting with a good slow morphic and its zest of psybeat. Organic effects serve as a melodious basis for this track which progresses more and more surely towards the heavy and crazy Sternendroge Tyrsolen (live). We are in Space Rock reinvented with didgeridoo or Vuvuzela effects as the first harmonic verse. The rhythm follows the multiple tumbles of the beat-box percussions which sound very good in the spasmodic neurosis of the sequencer. Our ears must rest in its final which is overflowing towards the dreamy piano of Michael Brückner, uniting Sternendroge Tyrsolen (live) to Kosmonautin. Piano which starts to jerk in subdued ambiences, subsequently becoming a sequence which radiates a little of its shadow with its hopping in the bed of Kosmonautin's orchestrations. A form of crescendo develops inside this minimal and minimalist procession that a synth covers up with very good solos. The orchestrations begin to swaddle up the march, making it more intense, more moving. And it's in a spiritual and transitional atmosphere that Kosmonautin slips into the title-track. The sequencer vibrates with a melodious vision that vaguely reminds us of a melody from our childhood. Percussive effects adorn this sequenced spiral that develops for a good EDM eyeing for techno. This is a great track with a great spirit which evolves in different rhythmic visions. The live version is even more wild. First title as a bonus track, Der Aetherophonist (live) offers the know-how of Detlev Everling on Theremin. We are in dark ambience, even the opening is kind of strange, while Spiegelkabinett offers us a very nice lunar ballad, without rhythm or beats, sung by a synth to give us shivers, both in the back and on the arms. A great ambient track!
The second CD offers a more atmospheric vision of this journey with a more daring and unconventional rhythmic structure in Ypsilon Ypsilon, regardless of the versions. Die Stimme der Unendlichkeit leads to an opening of these ambient cosmic soundscapes with a certain dose of velocity in the passion linked to the styling of synthesized harmonies and the evolving of ambiences. This is a nice fit to Spiegelkabinett. After this purely ambient title, Signale offers an increasing rhythm towards a level of Electronica caramelized of good synth solos. Der schweigende Stern returns to ambient panoramas with a darker structure while Ypsilon Ypsilon blows our eardrums with a totally disjointed rhythm structure. Let's say that the cosmic and nocturnal ambiences of Die Zusammenkunft (live) are welcome here. On the other hand, its distant noises and its mechanical whispers have enough to nourish any philosophical form on paranoia. Weltraumfahrer finally injects a little life with a spheroidal structure of the sequencer whose peaceful flow is jostled by percussions sounding like cardboard boxes. But it works and it manages to raise the pace up a notch. Then follows the superb Spiegelteleskop! Its hypnotically seraphic rhythm spins in an astral ascent worthy of an exceptional finale.
Three bonus-tracks close REISEZIEL MOND for good. Jung is a pretty good title. Its ambient beginning is converted into a rhythmic structure which beats under a cloud of twinkling stars in a dark night on earth above Nevada. I already wrote about Ypsilon Ypsilon! Capturing that live shouldn't have been easy. I like the studio version better though. Reiseziel Mond (live) is a pretty good interpretation of this dynamic track whose rhythmic explosions border the frontiers of Electronica.
Phew! REISEZIEL MOND is quite an experience in music. There is a lot of music in this album whose ambient side is quite unique. The first CD offers a latent figure that explodes right in the middle to get us out of our shoes with the title-track. The second CD is quieter with an excellent title which is worth the price of this double album. Great music with an ambient side to discover from one listening to the next. And each listening makes us discover another phase that obsesses. And so on…
Sylvain Lupari (December 30th, 2020) *****
Available at SynGate Bandcamp