1 Sequence (2:15)
2 Waving (13:30)
3 Rustic Pictures (10:55)
4 Ciuleandra (5:59)
5 The Mountains (11:32)
6 Malini (11:37)
7 Nymbus (11:59)
(CD-r/DDL 67:47)
(Roumanian School, minimaliste)
Composed in 1993, KINGDOM Of LIGHT is the second work of the Indra catalog to be dusted and reedit. It’s also Indra's most popular album before his music crosses the Romanian borders. We discover a second album with rhythms smother by beautiful orchestral arrangements. Almost dreamlike structures where the tempos are mainly driven by synth impulses, except for Rustic Pictures and Malini, a bit like Schulze did with Totem in Picture Music but with more musicality and sweet orchestral arrangements.
Sequence is opening timidly KINGDOM Of LIGHT with arpeggios that glitter in suspension on a strange mumbling with eclectic tones. Stripped of rhythm, Sequence is animated by a bass line that delicately implodes under a wave fusion of a hybrid synth that releases nice violin layers and a mellotron haze that surround the delicate arpeggios and the lyrical solos. Oneiric, Waving is a strange title where the rhythm is trapped by heavy layers of violin that dance and twirl, awakening fine percussions with anvil tones. A slow rhythm that struggles to take flight, engulfed by an amalgam of sparkling arpeggios, astral choruses and slow floating layers. This environment shapes a melody whose flickering is tied to the percussion and to the streams of the sequencer which scatters its keys vertically and under the breaths of a synth with hybrid tones. The sequences twirl and hammer an indefinable rhythm that stifles in these heavy layers of synth which waltz and float as intensely as the rhythmic sequencing pattern. Refusing to release its rhythm, Waving forces a barrier of serenity with powerful orchestral arrangements, thus forgetting a pattern that once hammered a rhythm of glass and where strata and waves of sounds multiplied and sang under hypnotic percussions to tones of an anvil.
A synth with strident breaths awakens the melody of Rustic Pictures which already embraces the layers of an extremely musical synth, while drums fall and pull this intense orchestral movement. The rhythm evolves through the hold of violins and other orchestral arrangements where percussions pound a rhythm lost in space, time and daydreams. A little around halfway, Rustic Pictures enters an arrhythmic phase where synth solos are chanting among choirs in a mist of mellotron. The drums fall and their skins resound over these solos which hum a beautiful and delicate melody that leads us to the final of Rustic Pictures. Ciuleandra immerses us in a Romanian bucolic setting. Its introduction is of ether with a rather poetic synth that blows a strange spiritual ode. The first salvo of violins sings under felted percussions and pulsations, guiding Ciuleandra towards a nice Romanian folk melody. The Mountains is a beautiful title without a movement waking up on a stationary rhythm, like a dragonfly dance in an enchanted forest. Arpeggios with xylophone tones momentarily spin to adopts the flights of a synth always as much captivating and innocent as its first breath. After an intro of eclectic sounds with oriental flavors, Malini embraces an ambient phase before hatching with a gentle movement of the sequencer that undulates under the echoes of metal reverberations. Strongly inspired by the structures of Klaus Schulze, Malini evolves with sequences that permute delicately, in harmony with a structure that has become warmer and where the violin layers are still floating in an Asian mood. Composed in 2008, Nymbus blossoms out squarely in these more serene and almost poetic atmospheres of KINGDOM Of LIGHT. Its structure is nervous and jerky and is based on good battery strikes. Playing between its stroboscopic approach and its more ambient phases including some gloomy vibes, Nymbus offers a superb rhythmic permutation around the 8th minute with ascending sequences that resize a constantly evolving tempo. A tempo that turns into a long minimalist loop Techno fed by very good synth solos. Rarely have I heard as many Mellotron with philharmonic tones from Indra as in KINGDOM Of LIGHGT. We hear and see the difference, the maturity acquired by Indra with a title like Nymbus and comparing it with the rest of this album which is undoubtedly the most orchestral album of the Romanian musician. It's already good, but the best is for later
Sylvain Lupari (September 2nd, 2011) *****
Available on Indra's Bandcamp