“It's a musical journey that goes deep into Indra's impressive pallet of rhythms”
1 Rudyan 8:47
2 Crossed Memories 7:52
3 Intermission 7:25
4 About Seven 4:23
5 Dreaming the Universe 6:47
6 The End of the Childhood 5:50
7 Serenade in Due 8:23
8 Fantasia 7:52
9 The Soldier's Requiem 6:02
(CD-R/DDL 63:24) (V.F.)
(EDM, Dance & Trance)
After two solid Berlin School style opuses in The Call of Shiva Vol.1 and The Call of Shiva Vol. 2, Indra offers us another facet of his immense talent, THE CHALLENGE. An aggressive album with explosive rhythms that have nothing in common with the Berlin School style of electronic music (EM). A strong CD with great and frenzied sequences that leave little room for harmonies and melodies. An unusual sound experience that doesn't come along every day in this field.
Keyboard chords fall one by one in a perfect symmetry, leaving in their wake an echoing wave on which a synth whistles the mysterious tune of Rudyan. Tabla percussions clash delicately before feeding the strange hymn of the sequencer supported by good percussions hits in what promises to be an incantatory dance. Spectral breathes of the synth float on this linear movement where the piano resounds among these intriguing humming voices which stammer inaudible incantations. Rudyan the mysterious runs out of steam and disappears in the echo of its waves. One could without really being mistaken believe that Crossed Memories is a remix of Kraftwerk's Man Machine. The rhythm is less robotic, more melodious and it encircles nice layers with warmer tones. Intermission also has this cold rhythm à la Kraftwerk hammered by solid percussions. Percussions, percussions and more percussions on a robotic sequence and sound effects very close to the register of the Düsseldorf's band. At high volume, the sound experience is ultimate!
About Seven starts with a line of nervous sequences that goes in spiral at high speed over explosive percussions a la Prodigy in Their Law. The rhythm is frenzied with a hyper nervous sequencer rushing under synth breezes with a Middle Eastern ascendancy. Dreaming the Universe starts with a long cavernous blast that turns into a wolf howl emerging from the void between raucous native voices. A heavy humming stimulates the ambiences of this track that takes off rhythmically on ear-splitting percussion that slowly hits in a heavy atmosphere. Buzzing breaths over tribal percussions overload this track with a schizophrenic fever, so much its setting is tinged with an alienating madness.
With The End of the Childhood, we enter in a less neurotic ambience where a fine melodious sequence is forged by limpid keys and twirls on an atmospheric bottom. A second sequence gets in, forming a cloud of crystalline and syncopated keys which flutter on soft stationary strata which are soaked of heterogeneous sound effects. We go further in the universe a little twisted of THE CHALLENGE with Serenade in Due. The title swings in a vision of Groove with a good electronic drum and a good bass line. The synth produces a kind of bellowing with sound effects as frivolous as the lightness of the rhythm. Voices encircle the empty ambience of Fantasia. Sound effects top the circular voices on obscure Middle Eastern breaths. Hard to get off the ground, Fantasia is nailed down by a heaviness that rotary percussions try to free. A light flute gets out to be trapped in a faint turbulence of a static movement. A constant humming creates an unexpected sequence, making a track that reminds us of Klaus Schulze's early works on Picture Music and Timewind undulate faintly. The Soldier's Requiem ends the Romanian synthesist's new CD with a more ambient vision inspired by the Arab world.
THE CHALLENGE is anything but ordinary! It's a musical journey that goes deep into our imagination. There where Indra provides all the elements to modulate this journey according to the perceptions that we get from it. If the first part is superbly melodious, everything that follows Dreaming the Universe is a sweet creative madness that draws its idea from the shadow of our perceptions.
Sylvain Lupari (November 27th, 2006) *****
Available at Indra Bandcamp