“If you like ambient music with a very lyrical vision, Ovum is for you”
1 Olduvai Dreams 9:58 2 Ovum 7:59 3 Mariposa 7:51 4 Emanation 6:14 5 Primordial 4:52 6 Epiphany 5:00 7 Starry Messenger 9:03 Spotted Peccary – SPM-2805 (CD/DDL 50:58) (V.F.) (Melodic and poetic ambient music)
A new album of Chronotope Project always arouses the curiosity of the lovers of ambient music which is endowed with a portal towards universes of harmonies. Uniting marvelously the capacities of a synth with instruments more acoustic as well as with the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, Chronotope Project has found itself a special place in my discography of melodic ambient music. Softer and less dominated by oriental tribal music, OVUM proposes a very beautiful electronic prose with a good and soft mixture of rhythms which never perturb, but not at all, our passage towards our inner mind or sleep. This is very good album when we want to put our brain to off …
It's by a delicate wave very captivating which makes sparkle the songs of prism that Olduvai Dreams calls out to our subconscious. Tears of cello add a melancholic dimension to this introduction which soaks in sound samplings of a morning in spring. A sound life wakes up in our ears with fluty breezes which caress the heat of the soft aboriginal percussions, whereas Jeffrey Ericson Allen multiplies his sound textures with orchestrations and layers of ethereal voices. With a very sensitive dexterity, the multi-instrumentalist from Oregon leads the quiet rhythm of Olduvai Dreams towards a bolero loaded of emotionalism with some very beautiful harmonies of the multiple layers of flutes and where the intensity lives more in the tone of the percussions than in the rhythm which always stays in the field of a spiritual trance. A good way to start! The title-track is the contrast of this inviting rhythm with an ode to serenity which is fed by a heap of layers and their very diversified tones. Flutes and Haken Continuum Fingerboard, which makes no more and no less the effect of a Steel guitar but with the probability of a Theremin, dominate these vibes of linear breezes. A nice track with a good crescendo, Mariposa proposes rather a more sibylline approach with more acute waves which blow on a light ambient rhythm. The music approaches a more accentuated phase with a line of bass which gives a more moving dimension to a music which would do very well in a poetic movie. Emanation is a small pearl. Its introduction soaks in the mysticism of the spiritual meditations with dark breezes which tremble like being blown by a dark organ. The flutes widen a panorama of charms with very good tunes which hum on a delicate movement of a sequencer in mode ambient Berlin School. The electronic effects which sparkle here and there add a more esoteric touch. We are in the meditative music very near the harmonies of the New Age. Essential seems to be a continuation of Ovum, the title-track, while Epiphany espouses a little bit the ambient rhythm of Emanation, but with more vigor in it. The long sighs of the Haken Continuum Fingerboard really make its effect and add a very emotional depth here. These nostalgic tears feed a twinkling carousel of arpeggios which oscillate in the warm fluty winds of Starry Messenger. A title as soft and beautiful as Emanation and which is also endowed of a very beautiful poetic approach.
Soft and quiet with a texture of atmospheres which distance itself because of the presence of the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, OVUM makes migrate, more and more, the music of Jeffrey Ericson Allen towards Robert Rich's territories with a musical prose which reminds me of the one and only Darshan Ambient. A mixture of genres as improbable as extremely delicious which has literally seduced me a little after the first autumnal breezes of Olduvai Dreams. And if you like a very lyrical music with a tone so unique as that of the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, too you will be fast seduced by this mixture of esoteric music and nevertheless so near the New Age. A very rare fact in my discography; OVUM accompanies me from now on in my sleepy nights in the same way as with this music which is explorer of sleep made by Steve Roach, Vangelis, Michael Stearns and The Glimmer Room. A very beautiful album for sensitive souls…
Sylvain Lupari (September 3rd, 2017) *****
Available at Spotted Peccary Bandcamp