“Ultraviolet is a free interpretation of TD's Rubycon which will pleased for sure those who have missed those years”
1 Ultraviolet Part 1: Spectrum 19:23 2 Ultraviolet Part 2: Exposure 15:52 Lensflare Music
(DDL 35:15) (V.F.) (Berlin School)
It's like a tonal blooming which develops under Silvain's eyes, apprentice flutist and God of fields. The sounds grow in this music field and get into our ears with a little of echo and discord. A flute brings up a more harmonious aura with an air which is shaking under the stings of some cold breezes and the delicate knocks of gongs. Other noises, stranger ones, bloom between the crevices of synthesizers which add layers of chthonian voices. This tonal hatching wins in intensity of noises where falls of winds and horizontal hummings add more psychedelic effects to this long introduction of Ultraviolet Part 1: Spectrum. And if your ears believe to have discover the garden of influences of these atmospheres, it's that you know by heart the ambiospherical elements which fed the introductions of the first Tangerine Dream albums on Virgin. And it's after 8:30 minutes that the whole thing gets revealed. With a movement of the sequencer stolen from the memories of Rubycon, Lensflare sculpts this fluid and floating movement of the sequencer of which the heavy oscillations here serve as bed for a melodious approach of the synth. The airs of the flute are more sharpened, less dreamy also, and sing this ghostly melody which irreparably seduced us in the turning of the 70's. Superb and predictable, this version freely inspired by this first cult album of Tangerine Dream reaches its purpose with the addition of percussions and this caricatural finale which here really sounds strangely like those ambient elements in a title of Black Sabbath from the Mob Rules album; E5150.
Have we enough of these perpetual movements of EM which are freely inspired by old Berlin School and of its pioneers? From what I've heard since years, I don't think so because there is big movement of revival in the air. The young artists look for this analog tone, some are in search of the possible unknown paths of those years, some have even found them, while other artists are freely inspired by an album in particular which is connected to this era. It's the case here with ULTRAVIOLET from the Italian musician Lensflare. The latter said things clearly and dives literally in both sides of the Rubycon universe. I followed him and I enjoyed it. That gives me an opportunity to reconnect with the past. But his version doesn't surpass the original, even if sometimes we have the vague feeling to be pushed in a furrow that our senses hadn't perceived yet at that time, and even years farther. It's the case with Ultraviolet Part 2: Exposure where the sound fauna is especially denser and more creative by flooding even a longer structure of rhythm and which imitates the original in its architecture while bringing more abrupt contrast in its oscillations and more fluidity in its leading movement. To me that sounds much more like a kind of remix than a free interpretation. But in any case, one listens to it very well even if that never matches the original, and I don't believe that it was the goal aimed by Lensflare. I think that it's a fair free interpretation with a very good wealth and a search in the color of the tones. If you liked Rubycon and Phaedra years of Tangerine Dream, I believe that in the end you will be satisfied by this ULTRAVIOLET which is available only in a downloadable on Lensflare's Bandcamp page.
Sylvain Lupari (May 17th, 2018) ***½**
Available at Lensflare's Bandcamp