“This is another Roumanian dish with great leftovers...excuse-me; great hors-d'oeuvres”
1 Nymbus 11:59 2 Top Clearance (Soul Ground) 27:56 3 The Twins 17:29 4 On the Beach 15:25 Indra Music
(CD&DDL 72:51) (V.F.) (Berlin & Roumanian School)
A small silvery filet makes its way between our loudspeakers, irradiating muddy breaths from where pounds a network of spasmodic sequences. Nymbus doesn't waste time to deploy its arsenal of rhythm with percussions which hammer a structure knotted around the stroboscopic jolts of the sequences. The percussions are lively and support the glimmering of the sequences which merge into fluid some sonic hoops and which squeeze their selves in convulsive beams. Indra carries us in his lands of Trance Music with a structure of rhythm which will, for very short moments, leave its statute for some phases of sonic moods in order to get back decorated again of new sound elements all more attractive from each other. A sort of fusion between Trance and Psybient, Nymbus ends in strength and draws the parameters of an album carried by the rhythms. Composed between 2008 and 2009, the music of GOLD FOUR is injected by the sound and rhythmic fragrances which introduced the Tantric Celebration series. Top Clearance (Soul Ground) is quieter and begins its long journey in the odyssey of serenity with sequences which ring in a magic universe. Aqueous effects and a little tarnished prism are the reflections of a fascinating state of perdition where blow the last reflections of the sequences. A sibylline wave lies down, giving to this opening an effect of uncertainty from where hatches a very slow spheroidal movement. This movement waltzes slowly under the hatchings of diverse sequences and in front of a cloud of mist and its sound particles which whisper the silence. The first 13 minutes of this long track are pure marvels of meditation. More abstruse atmospheres seize the 2nd half of Top Clearance (Soul Ground) with celestial voices which hum on a carpet of prisms and in some dense orchestrations which throw an aura of havoc. These voices dissipate under the sonic looks of this approach which becomes then a very Vangelis one with lost chords trying to find a way of harmonies, while always in the background drag these tethers orchestral laments. It's like a concerto for a lone piano, we will hear guitar as well, played by angels looking down at an Earth of desolation.
The Twins is a very good piece of music knit in the Berlin School wool. The opening is embroidered with two lines of sequences of which the distinctions move towards in a spiral of ambient rhythm. Another line of sequence emerges and 2 first ones disappear while pulsations and percussions appear to their turns. But it is always the same ritornello of harmonious rhythm that returns. Sometimes improved by a synth which cries its tears of sounds and sometimes pushed by a greater velocity, the skeleton of The Twins exposes its hypnotic charms with these delicate variances which are these golden bridges of the magnetizing Berlin School of Klaus Schulze in the 70's. And as all good things must come to an end, The Twins crumbles its charms in delicious orchestrations. Definitively one of the best titles of this gigantic Archives Series. Orchestrations decorated of these old tones of AM radio open the atmospheres of On the Beach. Electronic effects add to this confusion of two eras, seducing our ears which are so diverted of rising movement of jerky sequences which establish the long serpentine wall of the ambient rhythm of On the Beach. So thrown, these parameters will be of use as rampart to a multitude of electronic effects which flirt between the psychedelic, the psychotronique and the experimentation of sounds versus the tolerance of our ears. The effects of percussions and the hummings of the bass add a dimension of disaster to a structure of rhythm which becomes clearly more excited as it is fed by these effects and jingles of the little wings of metal. And this spiral of static rhythm goes up and down quietly until it reaches the rhythmic boiling point with an avalanche of percussions which thunder at the 10th minute point. It's an intense passage with a continual bludgeoning of these percussions which drum of excitement with their effects of reverberations until the circular movement of On the Beach is about freed from it some 120 seconds farther, clearing the way for this wall which could have snake even for a long time with all these artifices that Indra injects to it. Intense and seducing, even in its heavy minimalist shroud.
Indra produced a great deal of music since his comeback with this gigantic series which began hardly 2 years ago. The albums of these archives follow one another with a crazy rhythm, as long that it's difficult to remember all that we have just discovered 5 months before… And there are pearls in there. Very beautiful ones! I think in particular of Ruby Five, Emerald Four, Emerald Five, and recently of Gold One. To this list, it's now necessary to add GOLD FOUR where once again I find no weakness, maybe for the permutation of the roles in Top Clearance (Soul Ground). And still there, the very Vangelis passage is very appealing, and its first 13 minutes are of pure magic. The rest is candy for the ears. Solid, from start to end!
Sylvain Lupari (July 12th, 2017) ****½*
Available at Indra Bandcamp