“Oliver Dombi starts to play with rhythms and contrasts enrichissing an ambient music which seems to get out of the dark smoothly”
1 All Directions (Brainshaped Universe) 4:21 2 Spheres (Part Two) 7:46 3 Everything is Happening 5:00 4 Only Matter 9:07 5 VY Canis Majoris 2:35 6 Long far Distant 7:01 7 Cosmic Ocean 10:24 8 Merging of Substances 7:25 9 Outside this World 6:20 10 Transexistential Perspectives 4:13 Spotted Peccary | SPM-2702
(CD/DDL 64:28) (V.F.)
(Dark ambient)
There is something different in the land of Csillagköd. To say the least on his last album, ALL THE TIME which has just been released from the home of Spotted Peccary. There is more luminosity, even if drones are also present and heavy. There is a certain cosmic envelope, even if the impression to roam in a cave once wraps us from time to time. And there are even rhythms, even if the atmospheres and the arrhythmic moments are always so dense and so sibylline.
A slow and intrusive shadow of music seizes our ears at the opening of All Directions (Brainshaped Universe). We hear some boiling of sounds there glittering in our ears, as well as rangy sighs of violins ghosts caressing our ears. Even without the rhythm, Oliver Dombi manages to reproduce a crescendo of atmospheres with more translucent breezes which float as the wings of a big migratory bird. All Directions (Brainshaped Universe) sets the tone to an album of atmospheres as much darker than in Silent World but with a little more emotion. Like in Spheres (Part Two) where we can even hear a seraphic choir on a structure of ambient rhythm which progresses on very spaced beatings and on impetus of orchestrations which wrap you with tides of sounds. It sounds like Steve Roach, just as Long far Distant, which is clearly quieter on the other hand. Crystal waves spurt in shrill chants, carrying the piercing Everything is Happening towards an ambient rhythm built on a bass line which would like to bite so much to the rhythm. Instead, it's a myriad of lines to the very acute reverberations which sing such as a choir of damned. The multiplication of the synth lines in the very shrill colors gives a rather striking effect. We dive back into the placidity of the linear movements fed by drones with vocal aspects of Only Matter, a long track of black atmospheres which is more musical than the Steve Roach's Immersion series. There are even harmonies ghosts and an absent rhythm which seem to come out of this case of blackness. The same goes for the very soporific Merging of Substances of which the unsuspected warmth of the hollow winds which sigh like the walls of an alive cave bring a touch of onirism. VY Canis Majoris is as much spectral as Everything is Happening. The chants and the carillons bring me closer to certain moments of Clara Mondshine in Memorymetropolis. After 5 minutes of ambiences' immersion always so tenebrous, Cosmic Ocean releases a delicate rhythm forged in strikes of percussions which are not really far from a kind Ambient House. That sounds pretty out of context in the rather lunar decoration of ALL THE TIME, but that passes very well. That's rather lively to hear some rhythm shaken a storm of black winds! Outside this World is another nice track where Steve Roach's influences point in a long structure animated by some carillons which twinkle a kind of surreal lullaby in a plethora of dark breezes from where escape thin lines of secret voices. Voices which are more present Transexistential Perspectives which ends a slow but intense album due to the emotionalism which gets free between these lines of synth sometimes dark and sometimes opalescent, but always sibylline, from where sometimes harmonies, as strange as fascinating, get loose on structures of rhythms always a little muddled. A mixture which doesn't leave indifferent!
Sylvain Lupari (April 16th, 2016) ***½**
Available at Spotted Peccary Bandcamp