“Silent Currents 3 is a lovely complement to Silent Currents where Erik Wollo proposes a different vision of his ambient side”
1 Silent Currents 3 57:51 Projekt|ARC00100
(DDL 57:51) (V.F.) (Ambient and ethnic EM)
It begins with winds. Dark winds tinted of dark voices which drift away like breaths of Aeolus through the monoliths of the Norwegian deserts. Up to here, the opening of this 3rd section of Silent Currents nests in the familiarity with the colossal double cd released hardly two years ago. And it's normal. Normal because SILENT CURRENTS 3 draws its genesis from the same source; the Silent Currents/Live at Star's End 2010 and released on the American label Projekt Records in 2011 (PRO262). The atmospheres, the tears of spectral guitars, the synths and their morphic movements and melodious winds, the dusts of these winds and their elvish singings surround a quite new rhythmic and sonic approach that Erik Wollo sculptured in the shade of his synths and guitars in its Wintergarden Studio in Norway. And the result is very charming. I would go so far as to say that this 3rd episode possesses attributes that its older brother didn't have: a delicate symbiosis between the rhythms and the atmospheres.
The first shimmers arrive as soon as in the 8th minute. The sonic pearls which shine in the lapping of water encircled into subterranean caves bring the listener to another level than the desert autumn winds. These streaming give birth to a fine rhythm which emerges one minute later with riffs delicately jerky which jump under the spectral lamentations of a dreamy six-string. Like an uncertain cha-cha, weakened by these ghostly pads which roar silently, the first stammerings of the rhythm of Silent Currents 3 are flowing with a surprising fluidity for such a dislocated junction. It faints in a broth of ambiences where roam these twisted lamentations of guitar and jingles of carillons which swirl in static winds while that the second phase of rhythm arises straight out with a finely jerky spiral staged on riffs which roll in loops under the howling streaks of an obsessive guitar. This phase of rhythm returns to lie down under its blanket of gleaming prisms which sparkle in winds coming from everywhere while the chain of riffs is reborn under another shape, kissing a line of resonant bass and borrowing the interesting territories of a mid-tempo filled by the fragrances of a black funk. And so goes Silent Currents 3. Drawing from the ethereal atmospheres of his 2010 Star's End concert, Erik Wollo breathes of a fascinating creativity which kisses Steve Roach's influences, for the clanic approaches, and Patrick O'Hearn's for the black rhythms and melodies. The guitars which cry on the desertion of the iridescent winds tear away the sighs from the soul towards the second part. We float in a heart-rending phase where the tooting of the six-string kisses the astral waves which derive in search of lost souls. Mixing serenely his ambiences as much black as poignant to rhythms as fleeting than harmonious, Erik Wollo maintains this fragile balance of rhythms and atmospheres which make all the charm of this revisited Silent Currents. The section of the 23rd minute which binds to the 37th is simply divine. Patient, Wollo maintains a hearing interest by playing on an ambiospheric crescendo which leads to a very beautiful clanic rhythm. A rhythm finely drummed in the shadows of an ambient groove that a fusion guitar/synth caresses of breaths torn between the passion and the passivity until the 42nd minute. And these last minutes of Silent Currents 3 draw from the abyssal atmospheres of its genesis, but with a reshaping of the moods and an addition of prismic tones, like carillons embracing winds, which replace the lapping of waters. Carillons which sing and which swirl lasciviously, misleading always the listener who was delighted of these oniric ambiences.
SILENT CURRENTS 3 is a lovely complement to Silent Currents. Erik Wollo would have given it another title than we would have been completely fooled. Of course, when we stick both works side by side we remark the precepts of Silent Currents. Drones, waves and layers of synths as well as lines of guitars as much disturbing, strange as meditative are of used as cloth of ambience to rhythms and to harmonious arrangements which infiltrate Silent Currents like a sound river escaped from heavens. Beautiful, very beautiful!
Sylvain Lupari (August 19th, 2013) *****
Available at Projekt Records Bandcamp