“A nice but purely ambient tale, The Legend bears the seal of two veterans in the field who kept their unique signature that characterized the intensity of their floating visions”
1 The Oppression of the Giant 20:46 2 Throwing the Hand 17:21 3 The River Filled with Blood 14:56 4 Out of the Dark Ages 17:03 SynGate Luna|DT01
(CD-r/DDL 70:08) (VF) (Ambient Music)
Divided by Two is a musical project led jointly by Gabriele Quirici, of Perceptual Defence and Danny Budts from Syndromeda. These 2 artists collaborate together since Fear of the Emptiness Space, which is appeared in the cd trays in 2014. Three other albums followed, among which Live at Cosmic Nights 2017 which had showed already the next stage of the duet Quirici/Budts. And this next phase is Divided by Two, a project of ambient music and music of ambiences with a strong connotation for essences of cosmos, even if this first album, THE LEGEND, is inspired by an Earth legend. Either be the mythical story of the Roman soldier Silvius Brabo who killed the Giant, cutter of hands, Druon Antigoo and threw his hand in the Scheldt.
After some first minutes rather quiet, synth waves revolve between our ears with this state of astral weightlessness. Lapping of water and electronic noises decorate this slow sound impulse which is braided tightened enough by floating multi-lines which seem to an obstacle to felted explosions. Little by little the dimension of the tones puts down its blooming of sounds with lines painted of contrasting colors which weld their wings and split them some flights farther. The sound panorama of The Oppression of the Giant is dark and constituted by the floating of multi-layers of which the esoteric chants are drifting in the density of a sound texture which exploits without embarrassment the most intriguing colors of the synths. It's hefty and this sensation to roam in the plains of the galaxies dressed in cosmonaut's combination is more omnipresent than those of crossing a river the hands cut, according to this legend that the giant used to cut the hands of those who were incapable to pay the price of the crossing. "Throwing the Hand" is more linear and plays into an endless corridor where the breezes and the whistles of the winds accentuate even more the sibilant and oppressive aspect of The Oppression of the Giant. The progression and the intensity of The River Filled with Blood is going quite softly and especially in length. The synth breezes are warmer and if we soak our imagination in a film vision, we can see this river of blood in the movie Shake Hands with the Devil and/or other movies of the same genre. It's quiet, more ethereal and clearly less cosmic. In fact, these last two titles are very contrasting compared to The Oppression of the Giant and Out of the Dark Ages which are two very intense music tales. And Out of the Dark Ages is even more striking, almost cataclysmic with these rustles of metal sheets and these layers of more or less seraphic voices, where all the electronic effects adorn a panorama always well fed and to the antipodes of a cosmic approach as a mythological one.
In reality, Divided by Two is not really too much far from the four albums of the duet Syndromeda/ Perceptual Defence. Thus, the fan and the listener are not disoriented. Except that here, there are no sequences, nor rhythms propelled by implosions of lines strongly opposed which distanced this music of that purely ambient of THE LEGEND. But on the other hand Quirici/Budts kept this intensity that characterized their music, making of her a unique signature in the spheres of music for ambiences, which implants images in our spirit, and ambient music, which makes us travel over the plains of Antwerpen.
Sylvain Lupari (May 20th, 2018) ***½**
Available on SynGate's Bandcamp