“It's a luck that it's only a 28 minutes EP because I doubt that my ears and my loudspeakers could have take more”
1 Solar Dome 11:52
2 Elephant Trunks in Space 9:07
3 Dispersion 7:06
(DDL 28:05) (V.F.)
(Sequencer-based Berlin School)
After 2 very ambient albums, Javi Canovas offers us an EP full of sequenced and heavy rhythms. It's a return to the roots wished by those who had succumbed to the tempting rhythms of Nights of Brightness. GRAVITATIONAL WAVES is a 3 tracks EP filled with sequenced adrenalin. A heavy EP with rhythms and resonant sequences which are sometimes wrapped by soft mellotrons. In fact, Javi Canovas makes a temporal journey, there where heavy and mysterious Berlin School was the prerogative of the analog years; the 70's!
And all of this compressed power begins with the hard-hitting Solar Dome whose opening passes by a line of twisted synth where fragile arpeggios roam there and dance too. They skip on the oscillating curves of reverberations while a heavy sequenced movement frees big juicy and frenzied keys. Rhythm heavy and nervous, Solar Dome unfolds then at great pace with a powerful undulating movement of the sequencer from which the zigzagging keys abound in a boosted resonance. It’s a heavy and infernal rhythm which sinks into foggy synth lines and ghostly breezes that is not without recalling the murky depth of Tangerine Dream or Redshift. Feverish arpeggios twirl around and dance on this infernal structure where the rhythm is forged in a powerful sequenced movement with keys that still splash with their reverberations, while very slowly this sequenced fury is quietly going slow. But it's a much nuanced calm which brings Solar Dome with difficulty at the doors of more limpid sequences but as much feverish on a stationary rhythm and encircled by a synth loaded of mist. After an intro where metallic choirs sleep in the abysses of chthonian sub-soils, Elephant Trunks in Space livens up with a crossed lines of sequential movement which flow rapidly. Keys open up at full speed, leaving on their grooves trails of metallic mists which sigh under the heat of the speed. Another sequence joins the leading one. It flickers nervously with hybrid tones and nervous ascension beneath a superb fluty mellotron. As much hard-hitting than Solar Dome, Elephant Trunks in Space is more melodious and exalts of a splendid depth with its heavy crisscrossed sequences which criss-cross a hyper rapid movement beneath fine parts of a fluty mellotron. That's a wonderful track that allies strength and melody and which ends its exhausting race beneath breaths of a solitary synth. After an intro with strange murky breezes, Dispersion offers a good melodious sequenced movement with keys which skip finely. Another sequence gets in and draws a form of echo in the shade of a soft fluty mellotron filled of tones from the analog years. Quietly the movement is growing in size and in heaviness with sequenced keys which cavort and resound in a land full of fog. In spite of its chords which skip nervously and with a heavy resonance, Dispersion evolves between heaviness and tenderness, a little like a blend between Solar Dome and Elephant Trunks in Space with a more accentuated and fluid breezes from the mellotron.
We can say that it's a luck that GRAVITATIONAL WAVES is only an EP of a 28 minute length because I doubt that my ears and my loudspeakers, as well as yours's, can take as much heaviness, resonances and tortuosity over a longer period. GRAVITATIONAL WAVES is a monument of weightiness where the melody invites itself in strangely powerful musical contexts. A very good one from Javi Canovas.
Sylvain Lupari (May 27th, 2011) *****
Disponible au Javi Canovas Bandcamp