JOHN CHRISTIAN: Dark Matters (2014)
“Lovers of deep and surrounding dark ambient music; you are going to love this one”
1 Domino 9:52 2 Blackwater 12:04 3 Collision 10:04 4 Halo Tenebrous 6:04 5 Shudder 9:12 John Christian's Music
(DDL 47:16) (V.F.)
(Dark Ambient)
Airsculpture's fans are very pampered recently. Graveyard Shift, Hairsculpture and now this last John Christian's album. Except that there is a whole world of difference between these two-last works of Airsculpture and this DARK MATTERS. And it's even more between John Christian's last solo album, Susbarbatus which was released in 2009, and this universe of cabalistic meditation that is DARK MATTERS. This very dark ambient opus breathes entirely by the impulses of drones and reverberations, as well as strange frictions which drum some vague and completely non-existent structures of rhythms of which the pushes weave tenebrous ambiospherical patterns as much black as the infinity without its stars. Lovers of deep and surrounding dark ambient music; you are going to love this one.
Domino unfolds its black breezes piece by piece. The matter takes time to take shape and to generate its magnetic field which draws its strength throughout the multiple reverberations and of its impulses that feed these tremulous hoops in order to form the axes of the somber ambient melody of Domino. We are really in the dark. In the limits between the cosmos, because of the heavy effect of weightlessness, and the abysses, because of the disturbing atmospheres bordering the darkness. I mention this because this impression to embrace the darkness is strongly present throughout this album. Let's take Blackwater! A wide wall of impulses from black shadows, and their Mephistophelian breaths, draws a slow floating movement where are well sitting reverberations and noises, all tinted of black, which are caressed by a delicate sibylline singing. This mass of dark lines amplifies the density of the movement, while the spectral singing stands out with a refulgence which is near the darkened lyric. Disturbing and not very relaxing for two cents, Collision is clearly more ectoplasmic with a symphony of singings from spectres whose howlings shape an ambient movement which lives through these profound ghostly voices. In all this frenzy of howling metal, the structure of Collision digs a bit in the dark nuances of Domino. After an intro stuffed of rippling synth waves to the colors of enigmatic, Halo Tenebrous brings the only pulsating flow of DARK MATTERS. Under forms of beatings rather accelerated, this pulse pounds with a surprising greediness for its survival in a dense cumulus laminated of acrylic lines. Traced in this pond of rippling lines which inspires the black ambiences of DARK MATTERS and which wave weakly in intersidereal winds, Shudder offers the most serene moments on this last John Christian's album which is a pure ode to a solitude tortured by its dark thoughts.
Sylvain Lupari (September 25th, 2014) ***½**
Available at John Christian Bandcamp