“A good headset is the key element to discover this deep Dark Ambient odyssey”
1 Life2, Pt. 1 10:38
2 Life2, Pt. 2 7:10
3 Life2, Pt. 3 5:04
4 Life2, Pt. 4 13:18
5 Life2, Pt. 5 11:54
6 Life2, Pt. 6 7:54
(DDL 56:39) (V.F.)
(Dark Ambient)
It's difficult to go through this new download-album from Lingua Lustra, SOUNDFIELDS. After a superb opus that flirted with a Berlin School formed from his imagination in Life2, Albert Borkent has rather chosen to bring us back for his 2nd opus of 2022 to his first inspirations of an electronic music (EM) conceived in the refractions of buzzing waves. The Dark Ambient music! Divided in 6 distinct acts, this new opus from the Dutch musician is an invitation in a universe of humming, iron breezes and ochre breaths. As long as one listens carefully to it, SOUNDFIELDS turns out to be more than a dark and lifeless mass of sounds. There is a thread of melody that quietly takes shape in a world where vocal effects are heard through the whispering waves of synths that have become sound grinding machines.
Soundfields, Pt. 1 is a symphony of woosshh and wiisshh where we hear in the background a fascinating melodic aura reaching our ears. The mass of sound is carried in gusts that are at times intense, creating drones that draw us into a world of EM permanently obituary. Soundfields, Pt. 2 offers a different sound envelope. Behind a metallic appearance, the drones have that pastoral radiance that we grasp more when our ears discover this brassy tone that is blurred by waves of bell tinkling behind a movement that moves with the slowness of a heavy soul. A fascinating dystopian Berber melody emerges from these ambiences which let us imagine the panorama of a desert of black rocks from which a white point stands out, that is to say the silhouette of the Tuareg prior. A strange electronic dialect is hidden behind the synth waves that float like the sails released by a grainy wind of Soundfields, Pt. 3. Synth pads are delicately deposited on these buzzes haloed by volcanic dust, letting us hear a more sulphurous texture on this structure where some ghostly chords will be deposited later. What to command all our attention on the music proposed by Albert Borkent. This perception of a strange dialogue of machines continues in the opening of Soundfields, Pt. 4 with waves of vocal sounds. This track takes us out of this suffocating atmosphere of abysmal darkness with a more meditative structure where keyboard chords cogitate in search of a melodious path. There is none! Even if birds chirp in a minimalist chant, the chords resound in suspension on a veil of buzzing waves that come back to haunt our listening resolutely in search of what charms so much in this symphony for winds and buzzes of a deserted planet. In a slower texture and with a panoramic vision closer to an oasis in an unknown stellar constellation, Soundfields, Pt. 5 continues on this momentum of melody crumbled by the fingers of a dreamy keyboardist in ochre breezes. The bass layers here are creeping, vampiric. Finally, it is in the lap of Soundfields, Pt. 6 that the longed-for melody is lying down. Its movement is upward. Initially, it undulates lazily to snuggle up to ferric orchestrations. It snakes the movement of this mass as well as effects of squeaking synthesized in a decor where the mists of the sands crystallize in compact masses that buzz with its yellow-brown tonality. A phase that invites us to a strange quietude soon disturbed by stronger breezes where dialogues seem to take a more human form.
Unless you like a symphony of synth waves subdued by moon dust, SOUNDFIELDS by Lingua Lustra is not what I call a musical appointment won in advance! A good headset is the key element of its discovery. Thus we are better able to grasp all the richness of a changing sound scene as well as the nuances in the textures and that link of embryonic melody that stirs the senses. The immersion in his zone of charms turns out this way total and without appeal!
Sylvain Lupari (July18th, 2022) *****
Available at Exosphere's Bandcamp