“A collection of music wrote between 1978 and 1996, Conclusion goes deep into the Teutonic soils of vintage Berlin School”
1 New Berlin 22:59
2 Aritmos 7 9:30
3 In The Moog 4:29
4 A Very Short Visit in a Froesen Desert 3:02
5 Spring 2:05
6 Raindrops 9:44
7 The Icecream Van Repair Man 17:29
(DDL 69:20) (V.F.)
(Vintage Berlin School EM)
Year in year out, there is always a new artist who make his traces with a strong release. This year, the palm goes to Sweden Eric G. An independent artist, who also paints fabulous drawings that are not without recalling the first artworks of Klaus Schulze albums, Eric G. presents to EM fans a powerful album that we relish from beginning to ending. Writing between 1978 and 1999 CONCLUSION follows a temporal curve, sailing between the analog area and a more contemporary period of EM.
New Berlin opens this e-ball with a marvelous composition which ties up all the musical zones that one can dream about the Berlin School kind. It's a slow and bewitching start with dancing cymbals and a hypnotic drum which let heard its orchestral rolls. Vaporous the synth gauges the approach whereas the percussions become more constant, hammering a hypnotic tempo à la Keller & Schönwälder. We are still under the spell when a nervous bass sequence with hopping waves is wriggling, initiating the step to a sulphurous fluty mellotron which releases an incredible mood between Tangerine Dream of the 70's and a more contemporary one à la Free System Projekt. And, of its 23rd minutes, New Berlin will cross some musical paths as much enchanter as hard-hitting with unsuspected musical directions filled by the progressive scents of the beautiful time of the 70's and of its analog moods. A truly masterpiece! Shorter, Aritmos 7 gets out of hibernation from a long opaque drone which melts itself in a sequence line with hopping percussions, pointing out the clever manoeuvres of Chris Franke. It's a heavy track with some reverberating contours which explode on analog sound effects and furious synth solos to very Schulzian savours. In the Moog is an extremely livened up track that could easily be aired on FM broadcast. Cheerful and melodious we can't ignore the closeness of the styles between Jean-Michel Jarre and Frederic Mercier's Music from France. A Very Short Visit in A Froesen Desert is a well composed track which passes from ambient mood to a more steady rhythm, eroding the ashes of Edgar Froese's Stuntman.
A short ballade, Spring segregates pretty well the classical aspect of the Teutonic approach from the Swedish synthesist because Raindrops and The Icecream Van Repair Man propose us a more versatile and progressive style of CONCLUSION. On Raindrops, the intro presents drops of rain that are extracted from a realistic world to merge within a more abstract approach. They dance and form a musical line which is used as a basis for a felted synth which combines harmony and obscure universe. The rhythm becomes more flowing. Surrounded by beautiful lines of a sentimental and nostalgic synth, it glides on a slow tempo where are merging unsteady percussions and metal drops with a texture of a glockenspiel. The Icecream Van Repair Man is the magical track of CONCLUSION. On a long dark shattered intro filled of vocal effects which exudes the voices fragrances of a famous German trio, the synth becomes of a haunting fluidity with synth lines crisscrossing in a tenebrous mood which is awakening on jumps of symmetrical percussions. It's a superb track which reveals a more theatrical side of Eric G. a little like the universe of Jean Pierre Thanès. The synth wobbling on a corrosive bass line is completely sublime, giving the track an ochred gravity. Avoiding the trap of monotony, The Icecream Van Repair Man embraces a heavier rhythm with more mordant bass chords, recalling the aggressive riffs of JMJarre on Zoolook. The whole thing is framed of a synthesized fusion where solos and edgy pads are fixing the track in a timeless framework to thousand sound delights.
CONCLUSION is a solid 70 minutes opus which astonishes from title after title. I may hear it again, that I find each listening as much appealing as the last one. It's an opus of a great beauty which follows a temporal bend and creates a remarkable sound intoxication. Eric G shows an undeniable talent which, hope for it, will be hearing soon on a next opus.
Sylvain Lupari (June 29th, 2007) *****
Available at Eric G Bandcamp