“This is a wonderful album which will lead you there where the horizons of oceans and cosmos meet”
1 Watching for Nephele 3:55 2 Serinus Rising 5:07 3 Night Tide 6:29 4 Diving Skywards 3:44 5 Ocean to Stars, Pt. I 5:47 6 Ocean to Stars, Pt. II 6:59 7 Ocean to Stars, Pt. III 9:36 8 Absolute Zero 2:08 9 Whales Weep Not 4:43 10 Absolute Zero (reprise) 2:37 11 Cosmic Dancer 6:45 12 Quarter to Yesterday 3:31 13 Song of Orcinius 1:25 14 Beyond the Veil 7:25
15 Where the Whales Still Sing 8:03 AD175CD
(CD &DDL 78:10) (V.F.) (Melodious EM, sequencer based e-rock)
Muffled sonic waves put our senses in appetite. Without knowing really if we float between the drifts of the cosmos or the depths of the oceans, the tranquility of Watching for Nephele shines with azure lines which are illuminated by sibylline harmonies and by panting breaths from a flute of which the origin remains to determine. With felted knockings and even more accentuated misty mood, the abstruse ambiences of Watching for Nephele slide towards Serinus Rising and its songs of sirens as well as its chirpings of a kind of aquatic animal always to identify which enchant our ears always in appetite. David Wright is unarguably one of the most beautiful composers of contemporary EM. A little snubbed by the hard-liners who worship only the Berlin School style, or the heavy English e-rock, this brilliant English musician signs and persists with an EM always very sophisticated and his English style which flirts profoundly with the New Age. The result turns into some very musical albums where his melodious perfumes surf with the vestiges of his magnificent Walking with Ghost released in 2002 and of which we still look forward to its re-issue. In fact, this David Wright's key album knew always how to illuminate the harmonious ambiences of his up-coming albums and PROPHECY is not different except that it’s the album which gets the closer to it. Composed with the collaboration of the English singer Carys, it's a wonderful journey towards this unknown meeting point where the oceans pour towards the cosmos. An intense album and, in my humble opinion, David Wright's most beautiful album since 2002. And, considering the quality of his albums since then, it means that it’s an album without flaws where the balance between the moments of ambiences and the big explosive electronic rock of the English style is completely exceptional.
Each title, like most of David Wright's albums by the way, is solidly imbricated one to another, giving a superb musical story which is just impossible to interrupt. Night Tide gets loose from the morphic chants of Serinus Rising with a delicate movement of sequences which winds up the unknown of its continual comings and goings. The uncountable vocal breezes of Carys are like some kind of anesthetizing perfumes and float behind this hypnotic movement which reveals a splendid approach of a violin for which we have never expected to tear up the moods. Idyllic, this orchestral harmony transports us until the heavy and threatening Diving Skywards among whom the effects of staccato of the violin and the atmospheres energised by a storm to come exercise a rise of adrenalin. And it takes off! It explodes with the astonishing saga of Ocean to Stars. Ocean to Stars, Pt. I starts things up with a heavy rhythm which unifies techno and the England School. We tap of both feet and we roll of the neck on this very inviting rhythm where David Wright forges some very harmonious synth layers which he harmonizes with synth solos as much catchy. And as usual, the founder of the AD Music label has this gift to throw into his structures strands of melodies which will remain anchored in our ears a very long time after the first listening. And that’s the case with the one which unifies the 2 first parts of Ocean to Stars. And if you don’t whistle on this melody that David Wright transforms at the whim of his synth, I don’t know what to say! Ocean to Stars pours on its 3rd part with a rhythmic always so lively and where the voice of Carys and the synth violin effects sing this melody eater of eardrums in a delicious soundscape of the East. These 22 minutes of PROPHECY are going to haunt you my friends, and this for a long time. Absolute Zero calms things down a little bit with a delicate lunar lullaby which flows towards the morphic atmospheres of Whales Weep Not with the voice of Carys which dominates the very melancholic harmonies of the violin in an environment of tranquillity where we find there a little Mind Over Matter's perfumes from Music for Paradise. And if we believed to have reached the nirvana with the trilogy of Ocean to Stars, Cosmic Dancer redefines these parameters with a rhythm as lively which swirls with a seraphic slowness in a superb duel between solos and orchestrations of a synth in mode Walking with Ghosts. Impossible here to not draw this parallel because the harmonious approach of Cosmic Dancer seems to be weaved in the cave of this epic title of David Wright's catalog. Quarter to Yesterday is another delicate lunar cradle song which knots the orchestrations and the murmurs of Carys around a spiral harped by a delicate keyboard. A very beautiful synth solo leads us to Song of Orcinius where the celestial voice of Carys takes also the shape of those aerial torsade up until the very lively rhythm of Beyond the Veil. What else to add? David Wright puts everything on it here with his morphic techno filled of those charms and those harmonies which eat our eardrums. The play of the percussions is as well rich as solid and the synth, always very just, throws harmonies under forms of solo besides weaving orchestrations which fill the airs while the voice of Carys adds even more to a charm as medieval as contemporary. And as all good things must come to an end, Where the Whales Still Sing ends the album with a very intense and orchestral approach which reminds to us how the music of Vangelis has influenced David Wright's visions.
PROPHECY is an intense work! From the first second to the last one, David Wright captivates us and enjoys firing us the hairs of the backspine and the sighs of beatitude with an album rich in lively rhythms and in melodies eaters of ears. While adding an element of charm, the voice of Carys doesn't hinder at no moment David Wright's highly melodious signature which is more intense than ever here with rich orchestrations, solos which nail us to our earphones and sound effects which ally the oceans to the cosmos. In brief an album without smudges that I have savoured my ears full to the top and where I was telling myself how beautiful music is. How EM can be wonderful! And if Walking with Ghosts was the reference album when we spoke about David Wright, this PROPHECY follows it from now on for years to come.
Sylvain Lupari (February 3rd, 2017) *****
Available at AD Music