“A very good album where all the influences of FD are admirably and well rendered”
1 The Dream Goes On...Mandarinentraum... 17:18
2 Sternennacht 9:41
3 Evolution 9:24
4 Le Culte 10:12
5 Time to Remember 7:12
6 After the Rain 7:24
7 Desire 5:41
(DLL 67:09) (V.F.)
(Minimalist Berlin School)
This last album of FD Project is of a minimalism tenderness and this in spite of some jolts with technoïd flavours. TIME TO REMEMBER is in the lineage of these albums which play in loops and that each listening brings a new ray of musicality. It's a good album with sweet passages weakened by a dark nostalgia where the bewitching and charming minimalist universe of Frank Dorittke is in constant evolution and torn between the melodies and the rhythms of rock sometimes curt which touch a form of techno for zombies.
The Dream Goes On...Mandarinentraum...is a very beautiful track and the cornerstone of this album which starts with a suave lament as sensual as ethereal falling on a delicate chord with a light crash. As if it awakens a cosmic world, this chord brings out synth waves that undulate above a soft sequence in formation that turns delicately, like a dreamy rhyme. A hypnotic sequence that turns like a slow musical carousel under the streaks of a spectral synth. Between the mystical world of Legend, the sensual and lyrical breaths of the synths from Le Parc and the melodies of Tangerine Dream's Underwater Sunlight, The Dream Goes On... Mandarinentraum... is just like an ode to the German trio, a bit like in Heavensgate, with the delicate voice of Matzumi whose sensual and melancholic breaths are mixed with the exhalations of the synths. Synths with vocal breaths that are entangled in a perfect symbiosis with laments and ethereal vocals sighing in a musical universe with multiple crystalline chords and a nostalgic piano, this passage is a poetic sweetness which is trapped in minimalist carousels of the sequencer. These structures intertwine and sparkle like rhythmic ditties for young devils in a sumptuous electronic world with Klaus Schulze or Jean-Michel Jarre's analog flavors. A great title which increases appreciably its crescendo to conclude with a Mike Oldfield guitar which makes sing its long solos full of emotion over a nice piano line. Delicate, haunting and melancholic, The Dream Goes On... Mandarinentraum...is a long melody that gets lost in the analog cosmos and Matzumi's suave laments. It has to be one of the most beautiful melodious tracks I heard in 2010. It should appeal to TD fans as well as Mike Oldfield's. Dualist, Sternennacht begins with a dark synth line that blows a sigh with romantic undertones. Light piano chords wander through this illusory cosmos where brief starry breaths shimmer. The synth embraces the forms of a guitar, leading the sinuosity towards a sequence with soft resonances which merges with another sequence with more naive hops. This juxtaposition of the sequencer forms a rhythm that increases its measure under long synth solos. And the track falls to a heavy space rock supported by good electronic percussions and a guitar whose chiseled solos merge with more sinuous synth solos, unique to the very mixed musical world of Frank Dorittke. After an atmospheric intro where layers of synth recall the melancholy sweetness of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, Evolution shakes up its rhythm with a sequence where the bass chords swirl in a spiral and cascade with chords closer to glass tones. The pace is sustained by these sequences that hammer out a dull technoïd movement in a nebulous electronic atmosphere with sinuous synth solos that intertwine in a heavy electronic ambience a bit like Software in Electronic Universe.
Heavy, incisive and percussive Le Culte beats the measure on heavy pulses that act as sustained percussions, driving the music into a heavy, pulsating rhythmic whirlpool where sultry symphonic synth solos abound in hypnotic, techno-dancing zombie pulses. The rhythm is not yet fully formed as it goes through its only lull where random sequences twirl among good synth layers, melancholic vocoder, rattlesnake sounding percussions and guitar solos that scratch this atmospheric passage floating on an awakening cadence and about to explode. And that's what happens a couple of minutes later with a hellish rhythmic pattern that is structured around heavy hypnotic pulses and minimalistic percussions that hammers out a rave techno, triturated with explosive guitar solos that would strip out the dancing floors. Time to Remember explains in itself the Mike Oldfield's influences on Frank Dorittke and the latter's devotion to Tubular Bells' universe. It sounds like a remix, so close to reality, of that delightful intro that has fascinated music lovers around the world since ages, with a guitar's jerky riffs and a synth with spectral loops that crisscross this sweet piano/bass fusion over a minimalist axis. Beautiful, but it doesn't surpass the original! Although it does make you want to hear it on the sly (which I did!). After a nebulous, misty and galactic intro, After the Rain gallops on a nervous bass line that hops around delicate crystalline arpeggios. Percussions sculpt a continuous pace that pounds under cosmic synth streaks. A short atmospheric interlude divides the rhythm, just to let filter guitar riffs that scroll in loops. A passage that caresses the very minimalist universe of Manuel Göttsching under layers of a cosmic flavored synth, bringing After the Rain in a very cosmic rock structure. Desire closes TIME TO REMEMBER with a beautiful piano ballad. A sweet lullaby with laments from a synth violin that a guitar bites in its deepest grooves with sharp solos, dividing the world of FD Project and Oldfield by a delicate razor's edge. A divine ballad where the strident guitar reveries cross the tears from a synth violin over crystalline sequences with a heavy ending where drums and bass bring us back to the tribal universe of Mike Oldfield. A nice way to conclude a very good album where all the influences of Frank Dorittke are admirably well felt and well rendered.
Sylvain Lupari (January 13th, 2011) *****
Available at FD Project Bandcamp