“Analog Overdose in the Applebaum Nebula is a beautiful album which shows the endless possibilities of an art that likes to slay its detractors”
1 Triumphant Return 10:10
2 Nebula Symphony 11:49
3 Sabrini's Escape 15:42
4 The Core's First Initiative 12:39
5 Kino's Piece 8:00
6 The Harc Lure 4:04
Analog Overdose (The Novel) PDF Book
(CD 62:23) (V.F.)
(Berlin School)
Sequences, disguised in the shape of Persian percussions, form the bed of the static and bubbling rhythm which opens this new timeless musical adventure of Fanger & Schönwälder. From the outset, we recognized ourselves in this motionless rhythm which pounds with its frenzied pulsations while the synths throw its twisted reverberations and its delicate fluty mists. A movement of bass sequence sets the pace for a structure of ascending rhythm and Triumphant Return takes its slow rhythmic flight under the acid rains of synths to the lamentations and tones as much vintages as quirky. And, as the masters that they are in the art of the electronic minimalist Teutonic movement, Thomas Fanger and Mario Schönwälder lay down the bases of a circular rhythm which grows with a movement of more jerky sequences of which the slightly stroboscopic jolts spin in a sound fauna so heterogeneous and poetic than psychedelic. Available in a pocket digipack format and in only 500 copies, ANALOG OVERDOSE IN THE APPLEBAUM NEBULA is a work recorded at the very beginning of the new century, thus one of the first works of Fanger/Schönwälder, which serves the needs for a book written by Matt Howarth, available in PDF on the cd, about the story of the psychedelicosmic German duet. A necessity? Obviously that if we are a fan of the duet or/and if we miss the psybient moves of wanderings from Tangerine Dream; the question doesn't even need to be asked.
And it's this crowding with the vintages works of Tangerine Dream which jumps in our ears with the quiet and the ambiospherical Nebula Symphony, about whom the title speaks by itself. It's a soft piece of interstellar ambience, a kind of fusion between Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre, where we let oneself be rocked by these soft sound waves which roll slowly on the back of stars. Quietly we are drifting towards Sabrini's Escape and its shy chords which dip the end of their tones on a movement of furtive sequences where, of the tip of their uncertain rhythm, they form a heady hypnotic spiral. And it is the frenzy. Deformed percussions, spectral lamentations, vague voices and tones, that only an electronic world can make oniric, encircle this delicate poetic arabesque. And it's the sublimity of these soft movements of wanderings and cerebral hypnosis unique to Berlin School which seizes our ears with a rhythm devoured by sequences with tones became of metal of which the fine circular line is chopping this movement of musing where strolls a synth and its dreamy solos. Now this is what we call a great track! The Core's First Initiative plunges us into the atmospheric phases of a black cosmos, deviating with lifelessness towards the tenebrous whispers of a final which falls into a still ambient, but more musical, approach of Kino's Piece and of its dreamy piano which spreads its melancholy notes in the seraphic sighs of fallen angels. The Lure Harc takes possession this phase of serenity to lay down a carpet of silvery mist. It's a prelude to loud sequences which dance in a heavy cacophonous approach. These sequences get astray in the arches of resonance of blazing chords which soak into emptiness and spread an atmosphere of corrosive nebulosity, bringing ANALOG OVERDOSE IN THE APPLEBAUM NEBULA in a dark ending where the breezes are sighing and the murmurs turn into disturbing whispers.
The diehard fans of the vintage years psychedelic EM will love this latest album of a work mislaid on the shelves of time by the Fanger & Schönwälder duo. A chance that Matt Howarth had a story to tell, because we would have never heard the great Sabrini's Escape. ANALOG OVERDOSE IN THE APPLEBAUM NEBULA is a very good album which, without reinvent the genre, shows the endless possibilities of an art that likes to slay its detractors with a musicality, and of by its minimalist structures, constantly mesmerizing. This is great EM which honors the works of its precursors.
Sylvain Lupari (April 25th, 2013) *****
Available at Groove NL