“We must listen carefully this album in order to feel and appreciate all of its subtleties”
Litania / Intro 6:16
Litania I 6:18
Litania II 9:41
Litania III 2:31
Litania IV 2:08
Litania V 2:56
Litania VI 2:05
Litania VII 5:19
Litania VIII 2:34
Litania IX 2:12
Litania X 7:10
Litania / Finale 5:35
(CD 54:49) (V.F.) (Ambient)
Written and recorded between 2005 and 2006, VITA CONTEMPLATIVA LITANIAof Polish synthesist Konrad Kucz is the very first album from the Polish label Generator.pl. It is an ambient, dark and emotional album beginning with a strange cosmico-monasterial mass where a cosmic monk mumbles an incantation propelled by sinuous ethereal waves. This galactic prayer stops dead! Except that the introduction continues to progress by being coated with heavy layers whose fine oscillations gradually increase the emotional intensity. Mumbled prayers, interspersed and mixed with heavy resonant layers fill Litania / Intro, initiating a fascinating galactico-pastoral journey into the heart of the dark and medieval ambiences with a fine cosmic aura. This first KK album promises to be a slow liturgy which oscillates between two universes with a heap of layers and synth pads moving at the speed of a cloistered meditation. There are few movements. Only long synth waves which float in suspension or which move with great blows of sound wings between the murmurs of momentary choirs and their barely audible dialects in a heavy monastery vibe where only the spirits seem to hold a right of passage. Litania I is a succession of loops without rhythm which become entangled among cold tones and elegiac ecclesiastics moods, while the resonant loops of Litania II unfold like slow metallic wings. Fine arpeggios fly with a delicate insistence on a linear movement which ends with a dark organ announcing an astral choir with cybernetic vocalizations. Skillfully mixing the austerity of medieval monasteries with a cosmic inquisition, Konrad Kucz weaves the webs of a strange incantation with a liturgical paradox on a series of movements loaded of disjointed oscillations and Gregorian chants from a universe in dissolution. Skilled, he knows how to fill his moods by adding fine bass lines, enveloping strata as well as isolated choirs by gradually and continuously increasing the intensity of his music in order to reach an expected paroxysm with a musical and poetic finale where everything come together to conclude a work that is both mystical, dark and intriguing.
I must admit that VITA CONTEMPLATIVA LITANIAis not an easy one. It's a work torn between two ecclesiastical antipodes where rebirth seems to want to be reborn in the cosmic spheres. You must listen it carefully in order to feel and appreciate all of its subtleties. But it remains a deeply ambient work where the weak impulses and sequences animate little parts of beats in V, VII and VIII. But beyond the fine and brief rhythms hide an amazing intensity which climbs hesitantly with a poetic vision (Litania VI and Litania X) in divided universes where the atmospheres as cavernous as cosmico-tribal are in perpetual tension.
Sylvain Lupari (November 16th, 2010) *****
Available at Generator pl