“Nothing to understand, just to listen! And again, it takes adventurous ears”
1 Biología Marina 4:57
2 Observaciones Astronómicas 7:44
3 Bahía sin Fondo 5:28
4 Estepa 1:27
5 Tierras Malas, Lagos Turquesas 9:28
6 Patagónides 4:24
7 Patagon Oeste (feat Mark Spybey) 16:15
(DDL 49:44) (V.F.)
(Indu Ambient, Abstract Soundscapes)
I like the bold moves of the Cyclical Dreams label. There are albums on this label that you won't find elsewhere. I think of Enceladus by Sophos or Transkosmos by M!D!-B!TCH. But this PATAGON Vol. 2 is hard to pass by. Horizonte De Sucesos is the project of Marco Roberti, an Argentinean avant-garde musician who is also involved in the abstract music band Dead Voices On Air with Mark Spybey. We are here in the realm of abstract music. I would go so far as to say anti-music. Marco Roberti is also a traveler who likes to collect all kinds of sounds from nature. PATAGON Vol. 2 is a reflection in sounds of the multiple journeys that the musician has undertaken in Pantogamy, land of his childhood. The sound texture of the album is built from a bank of samples created by him, as well as field recordings made during a trip to Cerro Avanzado and a VST. The Moog Slim Phatty and Korg Minilogue synths were also incorporated into the making of this album with samples of a guitar heavily tortured and sequenced. And this sound is the barrier that must be crossed in order to listen to a music of a coldness and metallic sensation that unfortunately is not in symbiosis with the subject treated. Unless the Cerro Avanzado has suffered a nuclear attack. So, it is with vitriolic synth layers, mists of rock dust and the sound of screaming metal cut in sequences that Roberti has conceived to present us with some memories of travels where the iridescent blue and the azure pastels should live and breathe. And yet, it is quite the opposite...
The first synth layers appear on the horizon, spreading two wings of sounds that give each other the necessary impulses to move forward. I can hear the guitar and a milling machine wailing in this mesh of coarsely melted tones as Biología Marina clings to a crawling bass line that forms oscillating loops driven by loud industrial wiiissshhh. There is violence in this movement that I can't connect with the meaning of the title. We can hear the waves rolling on the shore as well as those so discreet breaths of an ocarina fanning our ears in the opening of Observaciones Astronómicas, a beautiful ambient track where we can hear whales whispering. The synth layers spread a spatial landscape with good sound effects in this track with a warmer sound richness than in the opening track. That's listenable, even if sometimes I feel like I have a razor blade in my ears.
Howling ambiences and percussive rattles equal to a form of paranoia, Bahía sin Fondo unrolls its sonic tapestry with knocks. A cold ambient track! While Estepa lets you hear buzzing, like the flight of a Cessna skimming a gypsy party. In the context of an album built in a noisy environment for dream landscapes, Tierras Malas, Lagos Turquesas is more easily tamed. It is a heavy horizontal texture that unfolds in a heap of thunderous riffs spat out by a guitar on which only two strings live: the lowest and the highest. Marco Roberti triturates his strings with a violence expressed without regrets. I see Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar here. Buzzing and arrangements, Patagónides is the most musical, the warmest track on PATAGON Vol. 2. A little moment of tenderness before the descent into the artificial hell that is Patagon Oeste. Mark Spybey injects a world of insanity with industrial noises that manage to give us the illusion of a steam train station. I guarantee that on the 3rd listen, everything sounds normal! This fascinating exploration of Mark Spybey's universe concludes around the 8th minute. Horizonte De Sucesos takes over to offer a similar texture but in dreamy ambient mode until some perfidious breaths bring us into the bowels of PATAGON Vol. 2
Nothing to understand, just to listen! And again, it takes adventurous ears. This first album of Horizonte De Sucesos on Cyclical Dreams is for an audience fond of industrial ambient. Ambient noise as if these two possibilities could coexist to create something listenable. And strangely, after 3 listenings, we end up finding what was unbearable as being just odd!
Sylvain Lupari (April 18th, 2021) *****
Available at Cyclical Dreams Bandcamp