“This is a deep ambient album where are sparkling jewels and whose reflections in the absolute dark are very seducing”
1 The Communication System between the Civilizations of the Universe 8:58 2 Empty Galaxies 5:03 3 The Birth of the Solar System 2:36 4 Water from another Planet 4:41 5 Kettoscsillag 3:57 6 Nap 4:20 7 Silent World 8:21 8 Az Univerzum Széle Felé 5:17 Spotted Peccary | SPM-2701
(CD/DDL 41:26) (V.F.) (Deep, dark ambient music)
Csillagköd (Oliver Dombi) is the last find of the American label Spotted Peccary. This artist from Transylvania, Romania, is into deep, dark and hollow ambient music, favoring synth lines which overlap into slow aerosonic patterns clouded rather often of metallic drones. Initially issued at the beginning of 2013, SILENT WORLD is a first album painted by these nuances with sibylline approaches which are tinted of radiance and decorated with carillons of which the prismic singings and dialects transcend this feeling of total darkness that glides throughout this quiet attractive album, if we are into ambient shapes, where nothing is more contrasting than the reflections of the silence.
The Communication System between the Civilizations of the Universe (what a title!) break ranks with a total immersion in the core of opacity. Here, there are no melodies, even the absent ones! An ectoplasmic shape rises out of nowhere to shiver in the abyssal wells of a black hole where seems to be form a big ball of sound magma. The ambiences are black and sieved of long dying drones of which the outlines irradiate a bewitching sonic show. We can hear the cracklings expiring some glaucous groans and doors of metal resounding. The creakings of the hinges are switching into big bells of which the ringings get lost in the somber impulses of a slow movement which feeds of its implosions. It's dark, deeply ambient but fascinating. And if the first listening kisses the indifference, the subsequent listening reveals a fascinating soundscape spice up of delicious hyaline shades. And there is darker, more ambient with the very linear and without appeal Empty Galaxies, where the apostles of the transparency have difficulty to make mumbling their distant spectral harmonies. Subtly, we attend to an attractive fight between the obscurity and the luminosity. A fight which finally irradiates all the charms of SILENT WORLD. And it's even more tangible with The Birth of the Solar System and its harmonious carillons which are letting the main melody be lulled by a lineage of black breaths. This is a track, just as Kettoscsillag, which distances itself easily and hooks the hearing more straightforwardly by the opalescent approach of their carillons. A little as Water from another Planet where prisms are metamorphosing into crystalline rocks in order to shape a delicate melody of which the charms of glass are dancing weakly in some drones peppered by the slow implosions of a lazy and finely musical bass line, a bit like in the sound universe of Patrick O' Hearn. This is a nice ambient track we have here and quietly we are getting into the luminous part of Csillagköd's first album. The sibylline singings are legion here. You must be attentive because often they are humming in the shadows of the synth waves which spread those vampiric veils of blackness. On Nap, they radiate weakly before losing their luster in the chant of the carillons and their effects of prismic cascade. Contrary to the title-track where the same carillons are soaked of black. Our ears are filled by huge rumblings whose slow impulses make us imagine the noises of the reactors of a big space shuttle. The delicate arpeggios, painted of darkness, are just sparkling enough in this dark soundscape to shine with an almost absent melody which makes a good contrast with these enormous and intense hummings. Az Univerzum Széle Felé concludes the album with a superb ambient melody molded in the core of these carillons which made themselves so discreet since the first breezes of The Birth of the Solar System. Delicate, the arpeggios fall like snowflakes and spread their crystal arabesques on a bed of tin where attractive finches are the witnesses of this duality, this intestinal fight between the brightness and the darkness of which the main winner is this listener who is always amazed by the charms of SILENT WORLD. Without reinventing the genre, even if he brings a subtle melodic touch with these prisms which sparkle here and there in sweet melodic pattern, Csillagköd reveals us a good insight of a form of music which justly needs more brightness from times to times. But you have to listen to hear the glow!
Sylvain Lupari (December 15th, 2014) ***½**
Available at Spotted Peccary Bandcamp