“A bit less dynamic than One, it remains a very good enthralling album where IDM gets closer to the borders of New Berlin School”
1 Aether 7:19 2 Fractal Dimension 8:03 3 Fluid in Blue 5:15 4 Planum 3:44 5 Movements 7:35 6 Illuminated by Ultraviolet 6:32 7 Thought Drop 4:14 8 Falling Through 6:03 9 Astral Body 8:35 10 Aphelion 3:20 11 Quantum Teleportation 10:00 Spotted Peccary| SPM-2202
(CD/DDL/ Spotify 71:05) (V.F.) (Techno, EDM, ambient phases)
The first note which falls is resounding and skipping from an ear to another, revealing in its jerky tumult a delicious melodious approach which reminds Jerome Froese's style. Ambient and swirling slightly in some lunar waves of synth, the rhythm feeds on slamming percussions. The melody, always fragile, throws its seraphic charm while quite slowly Aether dives into a static whirlwind where everything becomes in suspension. Rhythm and melody fall in a sound slump. A kind of break-beat eaten away from everywhere by jerky stroboscopic lines where elements stutter in a phase of morphic dance, which little by little stabilizes and returns to its banging and lively pace as well as its melody slowly magnetizing. After a first album which had seduced the scene of IDM, techno, trance and Goa (The album One-SPM 2201) last year, DeeperNET comes back on the tracks again with a clearly less rebel album. With a collection of 11 music pieces which lulls between rhythms bordering to soft techno and a kind of synth-pop à la Jerome Froese into moods a bit more ethereal, IMPOSSIBLE LANDSCAPE aims to be an album of compromise which can reunite through its 71 minutes the fans of IDM to those who like that when things are a little more romantic, when the rhythms are a little lighter.
There are always rhythms of fire which are at times broken by meditative ambiences like on Fractal Dimension which, after an intro fed by hoops which glide in ethereal frames of mind, offers a techno as ambient as organic with crisscrossed sequences and gurgling keys which lean on sober pulsations and technoïd percussions. The melody is spheroidal and swirls in concert with fat sequences while the music is eventually diving into a very floating cosmic passage. I call this a vertical techno. Intelligent techno? This is not really violent, and we skip on the spot such as zombies which smell the flesh through every sonic pulsation. After two solid opening acts, Andrew Miles offers a more ethereal, amore poetic musical vision with the delicate voice of Zefora which floats on a nice ballad rocked by somber, a bit howling, synth layers and notes of an acoustic guitar forged in the interstices of the Virus T1. The rhythm is slow. As slow as the percussions which knock it out and drives the track towards beautiful smooth zones as mystic as angelic. I think it's a good intelligent synth-pop like the very pleasant Illuminated by Ultraviolet; one of the good tracks here strongly filled by the influences of Jerome Froese. Moreover, the parallel with Froese son is completely indicated to explain better this last album of DeeperNET.
On IMPOSSIBLE LANDSCAPE Andrew Miles concocts a beautiful cocktail of rhythms to the diapasons of any instinct and of melodies carrier of earworms that enchants in a universe of percussions and very attractive drummed chords; the skeleton of Illuminated by Ultraviolet and also Movements which clean out our ears with a techno (I'm always hearing Jerome Froese) with fat sequencing chords which spits a resonant sonic poison. The rhythm divides itself between its muffled hammerings, its technoïd pulsations, its percussions which sound like register cash money and its crisscrossed sequences which intertwine with lines of melodies floating such as spectres hermits of their wandering. Planum, just like Thought Drop and the very melancholic Aphelion, propose us a more ambient version of DeeperNET while that Falling Through plunges us into a fascinating universe of tribal meditation with thunders of Japanese percussions which bear the delicate voice of Zefora and the layers of synth which waltz in some very ethereal horizons. Astral Body distances itself with an approach which mixes synth-pop and psybient. The rhythm is solid with good percussions and the melody finds refuge in a kind of talk-box which gets loose in a stroboscopic spheroidal movement. The ambiences are forged in an electronic approach as cybernetic as organic. It's something that we have already heard (Shpongle?) which remains really effective. The album ends with a very IDM approach where percussions hammer a galloping hypnotic rhythm and lines of sequences swirl in a jerky way. Flavored by organic sonic effects and by stroboscopic sequences, Quantum Teleportation is a very DJ kind of track. A work of dance music embalmed by effects and by cosmic electronic pads. We have our ears as full of tones as our feet filled of blood.
DeeperNET is undoubtedly a good find of the Spotted Peccary label and its more invigorating division O3E. Andrew Miles is the architect of an album much more serene than One. An album which gets closer a little more of this new orientation than we observe now with a kind of EDM closer the roots of New Berlin School than the trance or the Goa styles. Although I savoured the rhythms of fire of One, I did enjoy this relative serenity, this little more poetic approach which floats in ambiences which are very near the psychedelic borders, otherwise psychotronic ones, of IMPOSSIBLE LANDSCAPE.
Sylvain Lupari (May 30th, 2014) ***½**
Available at Spotted Peccary Music