“Wow! Aus dem Nichts is something that is worth. A wonderful and truly ode to vintage Berlin School”
1 Anfang 20:20 2 Mitte 21:00 3 Ende 21:44 SynGate | CD-r MOBS
(CD-r 63:04) (V.F.) (Vintage Berlin School)
In Germany, there is Geheimdienst and IBSSTF; Intelligentsia Berlin School Secret Talk Force. A very secret project introduced in the shade of an EM festival held in Germany with the complicity of the SynGate label. M.O.B.S. (Man Of Berlin School) is a real intrusion in the golden age of the analog and of the vintage years EM. An amazing journey through time where everything sounds just like in those splendid days. According to the rumor, AUS DEM NICHTS would be a work from a very well-known artist who has a big crush for the Berlin School kind of EM. The idea came out of nowhere, from where AUS DEM NICHTS which means out of nothing, and would have grows up until this festival where this artist met Kilian CabGuy, the head management of SynGate Records. The result? Beyond my waits! From the very first seconds of this album we are plunged in those sweet musical perfumes of our soft adolescence time where EM poushed its first breaths.
And it's by hollow winds, of which the strength raises some electronic chirping, that opens Anfang. Already, the listener used to the sound fragrances of Berlin School can identify some recollections of Klaus Schulze and his Totem moods album. Particles of iodine are crackling and pounding in clouds of ether while that a strange cloud of radioactivity floats between two morphic spheres and that a line of sequences makes its keys oscillate in archaic tints and forms. The rhythm is cosmic with keyboard keys whose rough drafts harmonies sizzle in an oscillatory movement pierced by fine imperfections which draw a long finely stroboscopic sonic snake. This ambient rhythm passes from an ear to another, from loudspeaker to another, challenging a musical gravity which amasses its small jewels here and there. The ambiences are as much meditative as psychotronics with clouds and mists filled by nasal electronic gurglings which, at times, slow down the growth of a rhythm always anesthetic. A rhythm which eventually found refuge beneath splendid solos with those delicious analog perfumes. Solos which swirl and swirl, sing and sing all the decorum of the beautiful ambient works of the vintage years. Deliciously magnetizing! The ambiences of Anfang are of use as background to AUS DEM NICHTS. They feed its 63 minutes with perfumes and oddities of the analog years and are the cradle of the superb Mitte which begins with an ambient rhythm weaved in notes of a guitar whose floating harmonies crisscross their singings on beats which overflow in a random way. Here the guitar is master. It makes roll its simple notes which turn in loops in vapors of ether. Jingles of cymbals forge the basis of a minimalist rhythm which skips meagrely in an ambiosonic sphere flooded of blue gas and psychotronic gurglings. A very Teutonic drum chews up this spasmodic rhythm which loosens a stroboscopic strand, rolling up Mitte in a rhythmic structure braided by sober percussions, spheroidal sequences and gurgling beats. The guitar sets free a little after 8 minutes (I cannot refrain from thinking of Max Maxxess Schiefele here), unwinding some superb incisive solos of which the twists coil up under the strikes of a drum freed of its robotics yoke. It's very good. Possibly the best Berlin School music piece I heard from a very long time. One would believe to hear some Göttsching on the jerky minimalist axes of Pyramid Peak.
The introduction of Ende plunges us into the ambient and psychedelic spheres of Klaus Schulze and Pink Floyd with a monstrous organ pad which unfolds a heavy dark coat. Cosmic sound elements a la Jean-Michel Jarre overfly this tetanizing mood. Chthonian choirs float over a puddle of electronic gurglings that a synth line caresses of its tearful agony. As unbelievable as it may sound, this hallucinatory sonic setting is somehow moving. We feel a sorrow, a kind of disarray. As we can also hear these synth pads a la Pink Floyd (in the 7th minute, I dive into Wish You Where Here) moan in the aggressive curves of a bass line which remains all in all rather passive. And a rhythm hatches out. A rhythm, tinted of an appearance as much innocent as devilish, makes waddle its keys with delicate floating steps which crisscross with tones as grave as of glass into some hypnotizing ethereal mists. And like that, this rhythm becomes harmonious. It weaves a silky earworm of which the reminiscences go as far as John Carpenter in Halloween and Mark Shreeve in Legion. This rhythm so docile becomes trapped in a rotatory storm and swirls in dark choruses and electronic chirpings, creating a confusion to a listener dumbfounded by the form of Ende and of its finale which rests in the solitary harmonies of a keyboard and an acoustic guitar. A little as if we wanted to point out us that Robert Schroeder also marked the very beautiful hatching of EM in its vintage years. It's exhilarating and catchy. And while we still want more of it, we notice that AUS DEM NICHTS has just shelled its last seconds. But there is a track in bonus which is roaming somewhere on the Web (yes, yet). This track (Danach-Zukunft) is available only on the first 42 CD sold of AUS DEM NICHTS. Adorned that this title is going to come to haunt the interstices of the Net very soon and that the bonzes of SynGate will have understood that a work of this size deserves an enormous visibility. I really believed that I was in the 70s! Brilliant. Superb. Magnificent! The best album so far in 2014!
Sylvain Lupari (May 16th, 2014) *****
Available at SynGate Bandcamp