“Low Life is the ultimate experiment where the French School is immerging us with a symphony of floating ambient moods and cosmic rhythms”
1 Low Life Ouverture 5:06
2 Low Life Part I 9:20
3 Low Life Part II 12:56
4 Low Life Part III 7:53
5 Low Life Part IV 7:23
6 Low Life Part V 12:15
7 Low Life Part VI 10:17
(CD/DDL 65:09) (V.F.)
(French School, Cosmic Rock)
The infinity! The musical horizons of synths as well as their melodies and orchestrations converge on the infinity. One has to hear all the cosmic and symphonic wealth of LOW LIFE to understand this. The electronic rhythms. The stormy and crisscrossed sequences which bombard and hammer the rhythms as much symmetric as asymmetric are the portal of the infinity. And LOW LIFE shows it amply. What an album! LOW LIFE is 65 minutes of intense EM where Jean-Michel Jarre's steams, in particular those of Chronology, float on rhythms and ambiences incredibly fed by a powerful electronic fauna as much multicolored as multi-sonic. Here is a surprising journey to the heart of the beats to hundred strings and knobs.
The staging is rather eclectic with tones which resound, collide and grumble on the remains of percussions from where rises a beautiful cathedral layer which brings the very emotional burden of Low Life Ouverture in cosmic spheres which remind me of the tones from the Serge Modular in Michael Stearns' Chronos. Foams of Jarre abound on this introduction wrapped of a poignant moving veil while bubbles of hydrogen water make the link with the spheroidal sequences and the echoing pulsations of Low Life Part I. A muddle of lines of sequences follows. They skip and prang, a little as tens of submarine explosions, in a stationary rhythmic magma. Somber synth lines sweep this rhythm more implosive than frisky of melancholic breaths which little by little become pleasantly musical. Soiled by an apocalyptic and philharmonic approach, these lines of synths coo with intensity like shadows of musical energy in an environment became even more cosmic, bringing Low Life Part I in a very good ambiospherical final. Low Life Part II is a small jewel of tenderness and nostalgia. The chords of sequences which coil up in their echoes to skip like muddy prisms are flooding an intro perfumed of a superb melancholic approach. We hear their organic breaths resound under a thick coat of ethereal voices which release seraphic singings of which the tones of meditative abandon are flowing on the back of the wide synth waves which wave idly. These sequences trample on the universe of cosmic noises towards half-time. Subdividing their keys, they forge a rhythm weaved by doubloons, loops and by echoes to deviate the oniric race of Low Life Part II towards an oscillatory harmonious rhythm which coos in loops and which binds itself to sustained percussions, plunging the track into a good rhythmic phase of which the oscillations adopt a diversity which rebel against a loud decor at both lunar and astral. And damn do these voices are penetrating!
Low Life Part III is the highlight of this album. The pulsations which describe the cardiac beatings of a breathless which gets his breath back brings us straight out to these lines of sequences and synth which tut in symbiosis, weaving the structures of a splendid mid-tempo which dances in a magical electronic universe. The breaths of synth are linen of silk which caress the booty of our hearing while that some secondary harmonies proliferate throughout this soft rhythm which crosses a more ambiospheric phase from the 4th minute. The movement of sequences shuck its rhythmic thoughts in beautiful wavelets which lull a void upholstered by interstellar voices and by tears of a sobbing synth. These sequences, became more and more weak, waddle with innocence under the fluty breaths which decorate the opening of Low Life Part IV, a beautiful ambient track, always very poignant, with some brightness of dark chords and seraphic voices which get lost in some discreet orchestrations. And the more we move forward and the more we are stunned by the evolution of this small chef-d'oeuvre that is LOW LIFE. Low Life Part V runs away from this ambiospherical hold with an intro seething of diversified tones. Bubbles of water, cosmic gurgling, studded trains, apocalyptic breaths, lamentations and melodious rustlings feed an intro which hears parade a train of rotary sequences. It's dense, intense and motionless, but that's going to move. Sequences are swirling in a controlled velocity a little after the 4th minute, drawing a rhythm which moves slowly in the vocal cords of the astral choirs and the noises of a still virgin cosmos. The broth is deep and waits for the attack of the volatile cymbals before with to implode with a meshing of the pulsations of a bass-drum, crystal clear sequences which bombard non-stop and percussions which decide for an allegorical space rock inundated by an electronic canvas which has difficulty to illustrate solos which make discreet in this opaque cosmic linen. Low Life Part VI ends this last album from MoonSatellite with a slow movement where the waves of synth are crying as much as they coo with their undulatory forms, reminding this finale that Thierry Fervant drew up on the path of our ears in Univers. The breaths are of agony, while the delicate pulsations of a bass line introduces tears of glasses which sparkle like the reflections of stars in a finale which stretches its immortality towards a cosmic electro storm where everything swirls in a hypnotic spiral which little by little is dying into the infinity.
A real sonic feast impregnated with an intense oniric, sometimes filmic and even symphonic, approach LOW LIFE is a true monument of enchanting EM. MoonSatellite amazes by his boldness by going where his spiritual mentor always refused to go. Either into the progressive spheres where the rhythms and melodies get loose to embrace the limits of a heavy and somber psychedelicosmic journey in the lands of the unknown. It's an intense, powerful album which is not afraid of its eddies nor of its boldness. Brilliant!
Sylvain Lupari (May 16th, 2013) *****
Available at MoonSatellite Bandcamp