“As usual all that touches Ron Boots turns out to be very unique, like these superb whispers of thoughts that we find on this album”
1 Songs for an Autumn Moon 37:18
2 A Gentle Night 5:10
3 Lingering On 4:29
4 Half Moon Rising 10:55
(CD 57:53) (V.F.)
(Ambient, spiritual and clanic EM)
One of the big craftsmen, otherwise the most influential, of the Dutch School movement, Ron Boots trades his clothes of architect of heavy and lively based-sequence rhythms for structures a little more ambient, a little more meditative. If we listen carefully to Ron Boots' works we notice that the Eindhoven synth man likes to put ambient passages which counterbalance to his impetuous movements of sequences on most of his albums. And in order to not confuse his fans, an extremely honorable gesture in my opinion, Ron offers his very first ambient album under the very poetic pen name of Derelict Thoughts. Presented in a slender and very nice cardboard artwork, AUTUMN MOON is built around 2 live performances of improvised ambient music that the magician behind Groove nl has presented in Amsterdam and The Hague. And as all that touches Ron Boots, this is far from being usual.
Songs for an Autumn Moon starts this ball for meditative moods with a plethora of synth lines which pile up and get interlace in an intense ambient-sonic pattern whose thickness kills all possibility of lights, even the most glowing ones. The movement is slow and sculptured in hollow winds with iridescent reflections which are strangely transformed into discreet, even absents, Gothic chants. These evanescent chants, made for making work the imagination, are transformed into long laments of wars roared through a big heathen cornet. Dusts of carillons rise up, disguising an abstract din of which the fascination lies in its capacity to delude the ear. We also hear some very discreet knockings. Knockings which little by little are sculpting a solitary rhythm totally encircled by this abundance of synth lines to the colors of the solitude. Songs for an Autumn Moon reveals its small intimate moments by interposed segments where the moments of dark and meditative ambiences turn out in more festive phases. Riffs of percussions redraw a wandering rhythm of which the regular beatings forge a delicate tribal trance. We hear a first fragment of harmony roaming in this bright phase, while that quietly Songs for an Autumn Moon crosses the bar of 20 minutes with an exotic ethereal approach by caressing a soft moment of serenity which brings us towards more enlightened places. And the rhythm remains quiet. We are at the edge of a river of prisms where the water stretches its small wavelets in celestial harmonies, calling back very well that one of Ron Boots' big influences is well and truly Steve Roach. And if we doubt it, the really beautiful Half Moon Rising is there to prove it.
With its tears of synth filled with melancholic sighs and its scattered note of piano lost in a sibylline mist, A Gentle Night paints the effect of a painful meditation by moonlight. Black, intense and very striking! Always in the same register of melancholy but with a more harmonious approach and a less floating mood where the percussions drum an absent rhythm, Lingering On offers solitary guitar notes which shine in ambiences weaved of black silk. Little by little, we go towards the very surprising Half Moon Rising and its hollow winds which blow on a desert plain. Early, a galloping rhythm lifts a cloud of organic dust. Respecting the signature of the solo works of his alter ego, where we always hear an ambient passage, Derelict Thoughts gives back to Ron Boots his due by presenting a more lively structure in this ambient ode. And if this is ambient music; I would listen to it every day. Certainly, the rhythm is static. Panting under an intense pattern of percussions of a rather ethnic genre, it quivers with thousand bites of these percussions. The sky is marbled by discreet guitar notes, by hooting winds and by glaucous reverberations where one would swear to hear gutturals lamentations from the West Californian desert's shamans. Yes, the allusion with Steve Roach is completely justified! Simply splendid, this title filled by tribal fragrances ends an album of surprising vibes of which the crescendo of radiances over the twilights reaches its paroxysm with Half Moon Rising.
Sylvain Lupari (June 19th, 2014) *****