“A really great album, concocted over 3 years, which bathes in a modern psybient universe and the charming vibes à la Steve Roach and ['ramp]”
1 Greenerblue 6:08
2 Dark Clouds 4:53
3 Springs 4:36
4 Deepestsespeed 6:16
5 Flowerescape 5:19
6 Smotion 4:10
7 Pulsating 8:09
8 Timebender 6:32
9 Cats 3:03
VU-US VU-US018
(CD/LP 49:05) (V.F.)
(Dark ambient)
The more I go deeper into the musical world of Bakis Sirros, the more I discover a daring musician and artist who knows how to put his creative priorities into perspective without necessarily wanting to make any commercial compromises. Interconnected is his new musical project that he forms with the German synthesist, Ingo Zobel. A duo of musicians fond of a highly experimental style who presents their first album, CURRENT FLOW. A bewitching album with minimalist rhythms that runs through trails dotted with colorful sounds, which was concocted over a period of 3 years. A period where the 2 accomplices went about their respective careers while keeping time to create this amazing sound journey whose exploration of musical forms, as eclectic as they are, marvellously mix with a sweet scent of sonic freshness.
Furtively, Greenerblue introduces us to this album with a fine sequence that rolls in loops under a soft mellotron pierced by arpeggios falling like an unreal rain. A minimalist intro where the charm is worried with these clicking of cymbals which announce the arrival of a rhythm disturbed by several bursts of percussions. Nervous and unruly percussions which fuse from everywhere to support a structure soaked with heterogeneous tones, to which a soft celestial voice adds a dreamlike depth. A first title that reflects the dyad ambience that surrounds each of the CURRENT FLOW's titles. Dark Clouds presents a more intriguing structure with a rhythm which undulates languidly and whose notes which float with hesitation add a sinister touch to this effervescent musical dryad which is at the crossroads of the soundscapes of Steve Roach and the very industrial world of ['ramp]. Springs gropes forward on a hesitant cadence which hiccups under a musical sky streaked with a rain of metallic stars. Here, like everywhere around the album, the approach of the mellotron synth brings an astral depth to a title which embraces the scent of a renewed Plastikman, just like on Smotion. Deepestsespeed is boiling with feverishness and with rhythmic nervousness. A great title which recalls the tribal vibes of Steve Roach's desert with its rattlesnake tones which sound with a clan vision animated by a frenetic tempo where variegated and indefinable voices plunges us into an intriguing auditory paranoia. Flowerescape is in the same line as Dark Clouds, bringing us back in more peaceful and clearer rhythmic proportions with a slightly nervous pace which crackles with a thousand and one percussions, as varied as unusual. The synth drops its breaths from heavy reverberations, while crystalline chords pierce this cloudiness in order to create a more harmonious musical universe where the rhythm gives the odd illusion of amplifying around rich enveloping strata. Heavy, Pulsating recalls the astonishing universe of Johannes Schmoelling in Wuivend Riet, with its multiple cries of locusts swaying in the darkness of a night of a thousand strange sounds, before biting the rhythm with more heaviness towards the final. One of the good titles on CURRENT FLOW. Timebender is strongly tinted of a metallic atmosphere with its anvil percussions which shape a tempo as heavy as slow, around hesitant arpeggios floating with a strange grace in this universe of industrial apocalypse. Cats ends this first Sirros/Zobel collaboration on an equally cinematic note where we perceive the meows of cats through a dense veil of minimalism and where percussions and keyboard chords make echo on a tempo which is at the borders of being amorphous. A really great album!
Sylvain Lupari (March 17th, 2010) *****