“After the Rain is an immense monument of deep ambient abstract EM”
1 The Final Transmission 25:20
2 After The Rain 40:07
(DDL 65:27) (V.F.)
(Deep ambient EM)
Clouds of metal in fusion release some strands of steel which float and crisscross at the opening of The Final Transmission. Like some rustles of magmatic spectres, these strands switch shapes into fine galactic waves of which the guttural breaths get lost in an abyss where the white noises prevail on silence. Recorded at the Basic Electricity of Berlin at the end of June 2012, AFTER THE RAIN is an immense monument of abstract EM. It's an experimental work where Ian Boddy pushes the limits of his Serge Modular system and his Ableton Live with a thick cloud of electronic tones which forge the elements of a black silence or the rushes of rhythmic adrenalin. Like on the 2nd portion of The Final Transmission where the beeps and galactic sound elements are shaping some electrostatic oscillations which roll such as musical waves in an ocean of intra-galactic tones. It's a world of synthesis, where the abstract art produces impulses which roll in a nothingness of slow combustion before getting lost in a massive space storm. What surprises and makes all the charm of AFTER THE RAIN is the reach of these abstracted tones in a pair of earphone. Never the emptiness will have been so musical even if the melodies are in hiding in a world without harmonies. The title-track is a slow symphony of electronic sound elements which agglutinate in an immense arrhythmic mass. Delicate sounds which float and roam, assembling one by one to forge quietly a first implosive storm between the 6th and the 10th minute. Ian Boddy displays all the sound possibilities of his Serge Modular on After the Rain by freeing a pallet of arpeggios which go and come, like cosmic jellyfishes dancing and dreaming up until the Sea of Tranquillity which unchains its refrigerated keys. Keys which stammer an extraterrestrial language, a little as to establish a verbal contact, before that the excitement gets seize of the cybernetic dialogue and that blow the abstracted winds from a storm to come. These winds of Orion are roaring with some scrawls in breezes, amplifying even more the abstract wall which separates our ears of the imagination. And thus is taking place this long carnival of tones and muddled up movements which forge the cosmic storms and calm them with passages as much soft as latent implosions, feeding so an electronic shower of the most experimental that Ian Boddy brings to our ears with a bit of abstract poetry. A peaceful shower which bursts out with one finale deserving of the best musical storms than the universe of the analogue can modulate with a surprising rhythmic precision. A universe where the imagination of the English synth wizard is boiling as much as the restlessness of the arpeggios which dance and tear to pieces in one finale which we would like so much longer.
This album available in download format comes with two short demos of both tracks on AFTER THE RAIN where the rhythms, the cosmic melody (After the Rain demo) and the cosmic atmospheres are fairly divided the time, just to show us all the amplitude of the improvisations that Ian Boddy embroider for this concert in the lands of abstract and experimental EM.
Sylvain Lupari (August 16th, 2012) ***½**
Available at DiN Bandcamp