“That was worth discovering Aurora in a best of both electronic worlds wrapped in a skillful cosmic texture”
1 Gravity Well 5:52
2 Ecliptic 10:38
3 Vox Lumina 9:08
4 Zero-G 11:21
5 Escape Velocity 12:53
6 Aurora 16:49
(DDL 66:44) (V.F.)
(Progressive EM, Cosmic, Ambient, Berlin School)
I had this crush for Ian Boddy's music while listen to Pearl; a superb collection that gave me the taste to discover the musical universe of the English eclectic synthesist. Borrowing the spaces of a cosmos with thousand harmonies, AURORA flows in our ears like a gloomy cosmic tale on structures where the ambient phases is shaping with rhythms sometimes flexible and sometimes unbridled. A very good album that is an excellent companion to any kind of cosmic reverie.
It is with a sudden sound brightness that starts the first morphic movements of Gravity Well. A reverberating wave is freeing out of it and draws a sinuous cosmic ballet where multiple synth strata float in a cosmos filled of esoteric vocalizes and of galactic sound effects. A delicate prelude to a cosmic tale which is melting to Ecliptic and its fine pulsations which draw an intermittent weakened rhythm which gets astray and reappears in sparkling of astral lines synth that sing colors of the prism. Splendid, Ecliptic soaks in a hybrid musical world where smells of the ambiences are dismounted by the soft rhythms of down-tempo that come and go in a rich cosmic sound texture. Heavy and dark, Vox Lumina agonizes of its weighty introductory breath, freeing at random exhalations lost in keyboard keys which quietly switch into the heavy strikes of the metallic percussions which hit and resound in a structure without rhythm. Zero-G transports us in the soft Milky Ways' musing with fine synth lines that wind around an abstract lunar world. This is a long ambient track of which last breaths are colliding the floating percussions of Escape Velocity, an excellent track which oscillates between stars and darkness. Percussions which collide with a quiet violence, but for a short-term because Escape Velocity explodes of a heavy and felted rhythm with dark threatening synth lines which hoot on nervous and jerky sequences. Closer to dark ambiances à la Arc, Escape Velocity is flying away on an ascending sequential movement, hopping with spasms and switching between the pure rhythm and balanced ambiances, with a mixture of deaf and metallic subsonic percussions which collide among synth strata shrouded by discreet spectral roaring. This is a very good track that we have here where the rhythm is gradually becoming blurred, ending its cadenced crusade with deaf sequences which fidget in a cosmos where arpeggios sparkle around heavy resounding waves. Waves which encroach on Aurora's intro, the title track, which ends this Ian Boddy's very cosmic album with hybrid synth strata floating in an ambiance mi angelic and mi devilish. Its wandering choirs are glancing through fine crystalline arpeggios, a little after having been rejected by quixotic jets, symbol of all the sonorous delight that lies in AURORA.
That was worth discovering AURORA. It is a good album of an exquisite spatial musicality which is addressing as much to angels as demons, so much stellar as terrestrials. I discovered in it a Ian Boddy, sometimes melancholic and sometimes dreamy but just as much aggressive and fretful. The beauty and the beast in a musical way! An album which frees a very beautiful sensibility (Aurora and Zero-G), while having a rhythmic amazingly wild (Ecliptic and Escape Velocity). The best of both electronic worlds wrapped in a skilful cosmic texture.
Sylvain Lupari (April 10th, 2011) *****
Available at DiN Bandcamp