“Always great EM with a different direction, Other Lands will took you by surprise but is worth the efforts that we shall put discovering it”
1 Music for your Eyes 23:25 2 Drift away with Love in the Galaxies 21:25 3 Outer Lands 20:04 SynthMusik
(CD Digipack 64:54) (V.F.) (Vintage Berlin School)
OUTER LANDS for other territories. Among these there is a territory that we already know well because Klaus Schulze has already united his music and his instruments to the very beautiful voice of Lisa Gerrard at the very end of 2000's. Here it's the female singer Alina Godunov who lends her voice of astral priestess to the very animated music of Fryderyk Jona. Another territory explored as well by the Polish musician is the one to twin his music, always so lively, to Ralf Hübner's incisive guitar, so giving a brief overview of what would have give an union FD Project and Klaus Schulze. And in spite of this incursion in another zone, this 6th opus of Fryderyk Jona is a safe bet for his fans and another album strongly influenced by master Schulze that many fans and criticisms seem to have forgot a little bit too quickly.
A nebulous opening perfumed of cosmic effects; Music for your Eyes contradicts a little the press information by coiling up in our ears with a structure which reminds me of Under the Dome in The Aeon's Day from the wonderful album The Demon Haunted World. Except of this small walk in the lands of atmospheric effects, Music for your Eyes shakes our body with its rhythmic spasms which are accompanied by some great percussive treasures. The rhythm emerges in the edge of 5 minutes with stars which sparkle on the soft beatings of a line of bass sequences The architect of sounds and percussions add chirpings which fit very well with the oscillating curves of this line. The pulsations are stretching like rubber kisses, and the jingles remind us that percussions are also shaking this rhythmic structure struggling like the skeleton of a snake being reborn and want to eat itself again. And the voice of Alina Godunov! At the beginning, I was bored, even annoyed, by this elvish voice which made shade to a wonderful music. Rarely we have heard a Fryderyk Jona as aggressive as here. But after some listening, I jumped downright on this union which forces our eardrums to analyse a powerful music where the influences of Schulze are clearly more present in a 2nd part livened up by good percussions and chords in a Groove pattern. It's very good, and the 3rd part, although short, is even more explosive. It's a blend of Under the Dome and Klaus Schulze in a Fryderyk Jona's sauce, that is quite a big number. Let's add the voice of Alina Godunov and we tell ourselves that the stormy paths of the paradise, because there is nothing very of ethereal here, are not that far.
Drift away with Love in the Galaxies is the petite chef-d'oeuvre here! The fragrances of Schulze are still omnipresent in an introduction as much nebulous as textured with wide sound waves which kiss a cosmic shore. Staggering of its uncertain sequences, the structure of rhythm emerges after the point of the 3 minutes. We denote two different movements which sparkle in symbiosis with a fluty line. A sheet of fog loses its drippers of amorphous voices and this zigzagging structure, to which are grafted other elements of rhythms including a heavy humming bass line, accentuates the heaviness and finally the pulsating velocity of the rhythm. We are in the lost paradises of The Dark Side of the Moog with this Groove rhythmic and its cosmic effects which undone themselves in stroboscopic strands. This title evolves slowly, a little as if Jona fed our ears with a little spoon. Ralf Hübner attacks our ears after we reach the 10 minutes. His solos are devastating and tear up the paint of the walls like a certain Frank Dorittke. It's these solos which give a unique dimension to Drift away with Love in the Galaxies which amplifies its intensity while the minutes consume the pond of our emotions. If the slow evolution is smoothly made, the finale is explosive of intensity and emotion with a guitar and its solos which flood us of its tears. This finale throws itself into the title-track and its structure as much bouncy, at some nuances near, as that of Music for your Eyes, sonic artifices in less. Fryderyk Jona leaves more room to the voice of Alina Godunov, that is more passionate in her approach based on improvisation. A structure which will flirt for a short time with the calm of an ambient passage, so giving a second breath to Outer Lands whose finale is to Klaus Schulze's excessiveness.
Difficult to tame, because quite far from Fryderyk Jona's other albums, OUTER LANDS is worth the efforts that we put in to discover it. For that purpose, the approach of the Berliner by adoption deserves to be underlined because he makes a very good transition between the voices and his music, as well as Ralf Hübner's incisive guitar and his synths throughout the 65 minutes of OUTER LANDS which at the end is another very good album from Fryderyk Jona... even if composed and offered outside our comfort zone.
Sylvain Lupari (January 12th, 2017) ****½*
Available at Fryderyk Jona Bandcamp