“This 75 minute-album is loaded of delicious vintage perfumes in structures highly stylised by Dirk Jan Müller's unique vision”
1 sludge 1:46
2 girls from outer space 12:17
3 misery 4:25
4 azimuth/drowning 11:28
5 compact\space 9:43
6 delusion 7:28
7 operation:echo 18:12
8 burn in hell 9:59
(CDE/DDL 75:22) (V.F.)
(Berlin School)
A distant reverb amplifies its presence by bringing sludge to our ears. Knocks echo in this ominous shadow that hosts a chthonian chorus. These 106 seconds set the tone for this new Cosmic Ground album. And if some elements seduce from the outset, as girls from outer space and burn in hell, others will require additional listening with our ears well wrapped in a headphone to discover the charms of an EM with delicious vintage perfumes. Once again, Dirk Jan Müller offers to fans of 70's Berlin School a brilliant CD that will meet their expectations. Offered on a manufactory-pressed CD and in a high-quality download, COSMIC GROUND 5 offers you 75 minutes of an EM with a unique musical imprint from Electric Orange's keyboardist.
sludge ambiences are quickly gone, so girls from outer space settles with its form of cosmic reggae. This sensation is diluted when the movement becomes more accelerated with a spasmodic dance sculpted by a sequencer that scrolls its jumping keys, like one places a bone on the skeleton of a snake advancing without his head. The rhythm moves forward with these curt knocks of a sequencer, and its limpid bones which also dance with those hits that emit a slight ray of resonance. The moods are sober. We can hear the remains of this Luciferian choir through this dance of bumps that goes by a short ambient phase around the 8 minutes in order to make revive its approach, which will be slightly different, whereas the rhythm melts in a dismal atmosphere at the very end. misery arrives then with its vaporous and dense layers of mellotron which establishes a heavy ambience of mephistophelic vibes up to azimuth/drowning. This title installs its 12 minutes by a carpet of atmospheres from which emerges little lost steps around the 3rd minute. They will become the basis of a minimalist rhythm that follows the anesthetic loops of a synth that makes cooing its layers of fog. A heavier and pounding chord adds to the weight of this rhythm that moves a little in the same way as in girls from outer space, but slower. It's the intensity in the moods and the amplification of the rhythmic threat that are the sorcerer's weapons of this title. compact\space is harder to tame. The music is nurtured by synth riffs that jerk one after another in a corrosive sound environment. Even those who are familiar with Mike Oldfield's album Hergestridge, before its explosive finale, may find this dissonant passage a little bit too long.
delusion offers another bridge of atmospheres that stands out squarely from compact\space in order to adopt the basics of misery. The ambiances are cinematographic with an intensity where there is an apocalyptic and even frightening vision, especially in the second part. operation: echo follows with the title of the best piece of COSMIC GROUND 5 in its pocket! Take a herd of horses, whose noise is stifled by a cloud of ground dust and isolated a horse. Concentrate on the latter and imagine him doing romantic kicks and all sorts of gambols in the muffled hubbub of other horses, and you have the main frame of operation: echo whose greatest strength is to sound like nothing that you have heard in the spheres of EM. Some will say Redshift! Too smooth, even if very energetic. Tangerine Dream? No report! Nothing But Noise? Hmm ... we're not far! It's a bit like if Dirk Jan Müller has managed to tame the winds and turn them into round nuggets with hooves that, once released, would jump everywhere by multiplying the sensation of gentle and round bounces that intertwine on a trampoline that isn't stretched to its maximum. The movement remains violent at some points, vivid and pierced by jerks that let the winds roar. A great bewitching title that we listen in loops with this feeling of never hearing the same thing at the level of the rhythmic jerks from a sequencer skilfully boned-out. We remain in the domain of good old analog Berlin School with a more fluid and a more homogeneous rhythm of burn in hell which is in the style of Redshift, but more harmonious.
As written above, it takes a few listens before nicely coax the structures of COSMIC GROUND 5. And we must not give up at compact\space! Jump to the next track (delusion) if needed, and slowly slide to 28 minutes of pure delight. A superb album, like Dirk Jan Müller has got us used with his side project Cosmic Ground.
Sylvain Lupari (November 13th, 2019) ****¼*
Available at Cosmic Ground Bandcamp