“Here is a feast of deep ambiant music where our ears become the eyes which fix the night and its stars”
1 Ondes Intergalactiques Part I 17:38 2 Ondes Intergalactiques Part II 13:28 3 Ondes Intergalactiques Part III 15:11 4 Störtebecker (Encore) 7:15 5 Extension on an Early Sketch 20:00 Bruckner&Brüssel Music
(CD-r/DVD-r/DDL 73:34) (V.F.) (Ambient cosmic EM)
The Internet users and the fans of EM, especially the ambient form, discover more and more Michael Brückner's extreme versatility. The German musician/synthesist also forms a rather particular duet with Mathias Brüssel which is named La Mansarde Hermetique. And it's with the latter, who is a specialist of the diverse samplings with a strong propensity for those which are cosmic, that he was invited to participate at the Cosmic Nights Festival in 2015. Both accomplices annex their creativity quickly for this event that was held at the Belgium planetarium on May 29th, 2015. And as Michael never makes anything in half, the duet offers a CD/DVD box set which includes both a video presentation of the concert and all the music practiced and played during this event which is mainly for the lovers of ambient and cosmic music. And it's based on the improvised movements that the duet Brückner/Brüssel has entered the ONDES INTERGALACTIQUES this festival which wins adepts more and more within the years.
Who says improvisation says sometimes long movement needed in order to establish a connection between 2 musicians who unite their cosmic visions for a first time in this concert. It's doubtless what explains the long introduction, I would have put aside the applauses, of Ondes Intergalactiques Part I where noises of frying, laconic pulsations and electronic clatters as heterogeneous as of sci-fi are flooding an intense opening embroidered in an ambient din. We hear hummings of gong, as well as other strikings on an intergalactic anvil, and cosmic voices describing a countdown. There is echoing hoops and sequences which unite their harmonies into an irregular stroboscopic thin line, whereas waves of synth, dreamy solos and cosmic choirs agglutinate on a background immensely soaked with a cosmic approach. We derive in the cosmos with an incredible precision for an improvised sonic banquet. A form of ambient rhythm emerges a little after the point of 7 minutes. We hear the echo of the sequences' shadows weaved a static rhythm which makes its organic aura pounding into dense, and the word is weak, tears of synth knotted by superb cosmic orchestrations. To say the least; Michael Brückner and Mathias Brüssel have knew how to adapt quickly their styles in a context of improvisation of an intergalactic music. Arpeggios skip in herds into a dense sound magma where are always flowing the tears of synth and spurt out their scarlet shadows with sharp lamentations. One would say singings of ghosts perfumed by the Martenot Waves. I liked it a lot! It's ambient but intense. We hear celestial bodies dominating the stars which parade like allegorical flames while the track soaks up its sweats in a very ambiospherical finale. Ondes Intergalactiques Part II proposes an introduction all in sounds where runs away a line of fluid and musical sequences which winds throughout a universe painted by dark voices. It's a movement which leads me back in the spirits of Tangerine Dream and of their Phaedra and Rubycon years. Glass arpeggios are making their astral colors glittering, whereas a line of flute is charming a rhythm which little by little spreads its control with a livelier, and also heavier, movement. The movement is spherical and unties its minimalist loops which wave into some very nice and a subtle impulse of a bass line and whose shadows draw the lanes of intensity which haunt the singing made by the reflections of the celestial bodies. Ondes Intergalactiques Part II consumes its last sequences of rhythm which run away into the opening of Ondes Intergalactiques Part III where they pound furiously and make dance their organic shadows beneath the singings of a synth which always approaches ONDES INTERGALACTIQUES with a vision of sounds and tones experimentation. In the end, it turns out to be a solid e-rock, like in the vintage years, which concludes a solid 46 minutes of good improvised cosmic music.
From what I understand, Störtebecker is an encore that the Brückner/Brüssel duet had practiced four times before presenting it in its current shape for the needs of this festival. This is also a very intense and a very ambient music with a thick cloud of lines of synth which piles up in a very compact mass of galactic waves. And behind this curtain of sounds, a thin line of tones a bit nasal forms a movement of sequences of which the crystal-clear keys remind me the universe of Software. The percussions fall and Störtebecker reveals the charms of a very good, and quite surprising, down-tempo. A cosmic down-tempo which will interrupt its mesmerizing cadence into atmospheres where the psychedelic approach is not really far from those attempts of Software to create a more experimental music. This is very good! I invite you to listen to it on the Bandcamp page of Michael Brückner and Mathias Brüssel. And when we speak about sound experiments, the 20 minutes of Extension on an Early Sketch is showing all its dimension in a rather intense ambient structure where stroll some lazy and brief structures of rhythms. It's more or less a track that we could considerer as a bonus one for the fans of the duet who will make a strong comeback in the skin of La Mansarde Hermetique.
Now, I know that ONDES INTERGALACTIQUES is an album from Michael Brückner and Mathias Brüssel, but I have to insist by underlining all the work of Michael Brückner. No matter where he nests and what he is doing, there always emerges from his projects a solid EM. And it's exactly the case with this album and its cosmic ambient music, its slow celestial ambiospherical synth pads as well as its gradual and magnetizing structure of rhythms which are the beginnings of a sonic decoration where our ears become the eyes which fix the night and its stars.
Sylvain Lupari (July 26th, 2015) *****
Available at Brückner & Brüssels Bandcamp