“A very good album with its share of fascinating moments”
1 Carnival of the Uninvited 7:25
2 Party is Over for the Blind Man 16:02
3 Only A Beggar at the Feet of the Lord 3:24
4 Ashes and Embers 10:38
5 On This Mountain Stands my Foot on This Valley Rests my Gaze 13:26
6 The Final Reveal of your True Nature 13:26
7 The Clock is Ticking but It is All Happening Backwards 7:36
(DDL 72:00) (V.F.) (Dark Ambient)
The opening of the title-track is all macabre. Rippling waves and rhythmically unambitious bangings spread a shroud of reverberation that delicate arpeggios pierce some 45 seconds later. The tinkling of these arpeggios are melodious while having the power to radiate reverberations, leaving Carnival of the Uninvited a first melodic link with the listener willing to taste the fascinating ambiences of Christian Fiesel. A suite of arpeggios scrolling like a centipede down a slalom slope sways in the crystalline echo of these arpeggios. Sequenced, this suite is quickly glued into a continuous line to create an illusion of ambient rhythm that comes and goes like a half devilish rhyme. Synth pads join the ever-growing melodic flow, which becomes somewhat confusing once the title-track passes its halfway point. After that, the dubious atmospherics blow drizzle and mist as big apocalyptic chords shake the temple of our eardrums and lead Carnival of the Uninvited into a droning finale filled with those winds that blow over a devastated land. This title-track kicks off Christian Fiesel's 2nd album on Cyclical Dreams in 2021. Available only in downloadable format, CARNIVAL OF THE UNINVITED is a stunning musical fable built around title's names filled with a depth that is as much about their meaning as it is about our perception. The album was conceived following a report on the different ways of celebrating a carnival around the world and according to the beliefs of the different peoples who celebrate them. And no matter the origins, a carnival is celebrated in almost all social classes. Very different from Follow Me South, the album offers a music as bewitching as its ambiences in a carnival where even the listener does not feel quite invited and where time and its witnesses roll backwards.
Party is Over for the Blind Man is a long track with a fascinating evolution. It opens with waves of sizzling sounds on a bed of static electricity. A ghostly pulsating flow radiates between our ears, beating like a mechanical heart that turns on and off. A bizarre procession digs its ditch with regurgitating elements while a thin layer of ether and organ filters a thread of chthonian melody that the gnomes cannot hum. It's at this moment, not far from the 5 minutes, that beats are heard. The irregular flow stirs up the listening as a surreal melody like to haunt the listening among the debris of the rusty chains that creak to leave the door open to the evil spirits. Throughout this procession, Fiesel plays with bits of melodies and cryptic synth layers that he throws into ambiences where we still don't know where the harm lies. Yes, Party is Over for the Blind Man! Only A Beggar at the Feet of the Lord exploits an ascending movement of sequenced layers that climb the steps of a dissonant sound universe.
Hollow breezes, hazy orchestrations, Ashes and Embers drops a necklace of musical pralines that crumble into a melodious thread. The atmospheres are more gloomy here with a background of legends and witchcraft where bruised souls ululate. A slow rhythmic movement comes out of the darkness from the last breaths transformed into synth pads around the 7th minute, creating another procession much more musical than its long opening. On This Mountain Stands my Foot on This Valley Rests my Gaze is a dark ambient track that joins the darker and more experimental universe of Christian Fiesel. Title in two shades, The Final Reveal of your True Nature proposes a first convoluted movement which struggles to get out of its embryo to finally oscillate awkwardly under synth layers with gothic colors. One is surprised to follow this almost non-existent cadence and to push so that it bursts even more in a first 4 minutes that a compassionate synth layer envelops of its occult veil until the second shade of The Final Reveal of your True Nature plunges us in the abyss of the dark. After these two ambient and experimental phases, the Trittau musician reactivates our neurons with a much more lively track that still conjugates his experimental vision in The Clock is Ticking but It is All Happening Backwards. Let's say that the music and its ambiences wonderfully reflect the meaning and the depth of its title.
CARNIVAL OF THE UNINVITED is a charming invitation from Cyclical Dreams to better discover the world of Christian Fiesel. A more accessible universe, with its numerous melodic snippets and rhythms that flirt with a bit of contagious madness. A very good album with its share of fascinating moments.
Sylvain Lupari (December 25th, 2021) *****
Available at Cyclical Dreams Bandcamp