“Jarre! Jarre! Jarre! is simply all over this album”
1 The Fourth State of Matter 10:13
2 Intrusion 5:17
3 Within the Parallel 6:05
4 Prism 3:08
5 In the Center 6:20
6 Parallel Five 6:38
7 Journey 2010 6:55
8 Interconnected 5:42
(DDL 50:41) (V.F.)
(JMJarre style, French School)
Sometimes it's good to immerse your ears in a musical bath filled of nostalgia! Like this interstellar wind that comes from so far away and brings its twinkling stars to serenade the listener in the opening of The Fourth State of Matter. A warm wind that undulates and waltzes peacefully, avoiding shooting musical stars while being accompanied by delicate crystalline arpeggios that shape a timid melody. Huge musical waves envelop this cosmic movement where a superb synth, molded in the stars, whistles a cute astral litany whose charm is lost in the hollow of the waves of a more austere and threatening synth. All this musical canvas bathes in a dense and poetic cosmos where bells sound the knell of a spatial atony and that the rhythm explodes on a powerful sequence with heavy minimalist chords which jump, wobble and support a splendid synth melody under the effluences of the analog years. A sweet melody that gnaws at your ears, like the most docile of earworms. The rhythm of The Fourth State of Matter attenuates to embrace a morphic phase where oblong serpentines filled of chimes are making chime their chords among spectral strata, cosmic waves and Jean-Michel Jarre-like sonorities.
Welcome to the wonderful musical world of Meesha, a Dutch synthesist who is strongly inspired by the style of the French musician and his first era, from Oxygene to The Magnetic Fields. Wonderful because WITHIN THE PARALLEL is full of those cosmic tones and ambiences that marked the first works of the Lyon-based synthesist. And Meesha does not hide it! JMJarre is his inspiration, and his music is based on the structures he drew. Musical structures that still had some juice and relief and that are buried in the mythical intersidereal meanders. Intrusion continues this musical time travel with a stationary movement. Nervous sequences roll in a cascading movement under synth layers that drop spectral breaths. A synth with Jarrian reminiscences whose mellotron-like impulses are tinged with a dramatic approach while the rhythm becomes spasmodic with sequences that furtively jump, without really feeding the rhythm, under a panoply of cosmic sound effects. With layers of synths covering a dense cosmos and slow morphic pulses, the title-track's introduction baths in a heavy spacy atmosphere. A wave is breaking midway through, releasing a jerky and well-settled rhythm over pulsing bass-drums and jerky synth layers, as the Korg's mini-pops trace Jarre's electronic percussive movements under a cloud of synth layers that can't help but recall the universe of Oxygene and Equinoxe. One closes one's eyes and it sounds like a sequel to The Magnetic Fields. Prism is a short track where the synth layers intertwine in a beautiful cosmic ambient dance. A melodious track, even if very ambient and floating, filled with the electro-cosmic essences of Jarre.
These essences furnish all the structures of Within the Parallel, the title-track, as in In the Center with its synth pulses and choir that structure a dramatic astral procession. On an astral gust of wind, the rhythm is ignited with fine percussions and synth layers flavored with sound effects that are both prismatic and cosmic. Although discreet, it progresses with ascending sequences that flutter around a heavy electronic structure that gradually fades and falls into the slow impulses of a synth that escapes brief solos in a cosmos full of analog sound effects. Jarre! Jarre! Jarre! Everything on WITHIN THE PARALLEL breathes the influences of the French synthesist. Parallel Five is the equivalent of those electronic rumbas he liked to insert at the end of his first 3 albums. Longer certainly, Parallel Five plays on an evolutionary rhythm which justifies its length and thus to insert good solos of synth on a delicate structure of deja-entendu. Emerging from a dark cosmic intro, sequences waddle naively in the opening of Journey 2000. This sequencer movement grows heavier as a synth whistles a melody imbued with gentle melancholy. Curt and sharp, the rhythm splits and Journey 2000 embraces a kind of playful military march. An electronic Spartacus with growing synth layers and sultry solos swirling around clattering percussion. A big progressive cosmic rock that slows down its march to embrace the stars and melt into the sweetness of Interconnected, a superb and very melodic track that concludes this 5th opus of Meesha, as The Fourth State of Matter had opened it.
Are you a fan of Jean-Michel Jarre? WITHIN THE PARALLEL from Meesha should definitely charm you. I myself have been hooked on it for several listenings! Does Meesha copy Jean Michel Jarre? That depends on your point of view! I would say that WITHIN THE PARALLEL is a clever mix between Oxygene and The Magnetic Fields. There is little room for cosmic ambience as such because each track contains its dose of ambiences that are quickly repressed by driving rhythms that are sometimes progressive, sometimes slow or deliciously spasmodic. But beyond these structures filled with delightful reminiscences for the ear, lies beautiful melodies that set off fireworks as much in the hearing as in the memories.
Sylvain Lupari (March 7th, 2011) ***½**
Available at Meesha Bandcamp