“MonoCHROOM is a stroke of genius. A titanic work which takes us by surprise”
1 Monos 30:00
2 CHROOM 30:00
(CD/DDL 60:00) (V.F.)
(EM, EDM, Art for Ears and Senses)
Didier Dewachtere once told me when he has just released 5 Jours de Liberté that from now on the next BySenses albums will be offered as downloads only because of the manufactured CD low level of sales. So what was my surprise when I received a small CD package containing a white artwork with a big black circle in the middle! To my amazement, I was holding Didier's latest effort, entitled MonoCHROOM, between my fingers. The fact that people only see one color has always fascinated the artist from Ghent since his childhood. And it was only recently that a friend told him about this handicap, monochromacy. This album is dedicated to them with a musical vision that shines with all the colors of electronic music (EM), and even more. MonoCHROOM, it's two long tracks of 30 minutes straight where BySenses offers structures in full movement. From psybient to techno, passing by EDM and Krautrock, the Belgian musician flirts with audacity to finally reach these pinnacles of auditory happiness which for some exceed the most beautiful of orgasms. This is the path of Monos!
But you have to be ready! If not, the first second of Monos makes us jump with a knocking that stretches into a wave with pulsating reverberations. In fact, it's a series of rubbery knocks that follow and each one stretches into guttural drones that make drool these radioactive tones in an opening where the din never stops pulsing. There's a strobe effect that fans those reverberating waves as a rake seems to scrape the surface to get all the radioactive juice out. It's not exactly restful for the ears trying to gauge what tonal color BySenses is trying to get out of this noise anthill. We have to reach the 3rd minute to finally feel an ambient phase floating above industrial echo effects with synth layers floating while clasping between howling winds. One drifts thus until the 7th minute where we await those titanic noises of the aliens invading our planet in The War of the Worlds series. Each call of the aliens is followed by a momentary quietness that makes this end of the world dialogue even more thunderous. Our ears then encounter a pulsating rhythm, after the 13th minute, surrounded by glitch effects and waves of synth whose eroded tones turn into quavering chords. These chords flit over a keyboard scale played by nervous fingers, creating a confused harmony with a tremolo that flirts quite well with ambiences always carried towards an xth dimension. There is a distressing side that stands out and turns into a more musical phase with a prismatic chorus that rises from it. This tonal union seems unreal, like the colors of a nightmare. And yet, Monos draws us more and more into this pulsating phase that is surrounded by good percussive elements while the spectral melody takes on an orchestral voice. And suddenly, the synth starts to make swirling its air, inviting our senses to surrender to the Holy Grail of Monos which ends in an electronic dance anthem of unhoped-for bewitchment. It is when the delirium brings us to perfection that we recognize a great artist. Didier Dewachtere makes the proof on Monos.
What if I told you that CHROOM is even more beautiful? Its introduction is pulsating with a clear leaning towards DJ music. Here too, sonic elements flicker at the same height as the rattling in a dance anthem made for the masses. More music, more rhythm and less noise, the track evolves with a palette of heterogeneous tones borrowed from the roots of early synthesizer tonal experimentations. Between these phases, beautiful layers of voices, like trumpet tunes, offer us a more celestial side than in Monos, even if the sound vocabulary flirts a little with its. Between the lamentations of the violin strings, we hear an anvil throwing its sonorous ink on an asphalt and its industrial ghosts which regurgitate suffering and ardour of the workers. But let there be no mistake. This unusual texture sets the table for Peter Moorkens, guitarist in the Onsturicheit project, to untie his fingers and let us hear his psychedelic harmonies rolled in loops. Whew! Amazed and charmed! The rhythm is of a fragile violence with percussions drumming between the different tones of the portable anvil. And all the time, there's this knife that spreads wooaasshh over and over. This incredible segment takes our ears to the 15th minute. A pulsating bass line awaits us with its slow rhythmic unfolding between synth vapors intoxicated with an organic liquid mass, we hear microbes talking, or possibly a toxic liquid liquefying us on a psychedelic passage with scents of Ash Ra Tempel behind each pulse. These winds become orchestrations that turn into mutant voices when BySenses decides to take us into an organic Disco where Moorkens takes himself for the incarnation of Manuel Göttsching. Amazing, splendid and stunning!
What I have just described to you has literally passed through my ears in the last 60 minutes. And 2 albums of BySenses in the space of a little more than 2 months! Our ears have something to be pampered because like 5 Jours de Liberté, MonoCHROOM is a stroke of genius. A titanic work which takes us by surprise and which little by little becomes unmovable from our CD player. The hazardous ears will be delighted and the most frightened will be conquered. Bold and brilliant, it is a whole work that Didier Dewachtere proposes here! Available in manufactured CD and in download.
Sylvain Lupari (January 24th, 2022) *****
Available at BySenses' Bandcamp