“This is an album filled by a mixture of the cosmic and romantic French School to the exploratory years of Klaus Schulze's Berlin School style”
1 Missing Time I 21:15
2 Missing Time II 17:59
3 Missing Time III 7:28
4 Missing Time IV 12:28
5 Missing Time V 8:53
(CD 68:03) (V.F.)
(French School & Berlin School)
We don't have enough of our two ears to follow all that goes on in the spheres of EM. We try to listen and discover as much as possible but there is always something which passes under the radar. Like MISSING TIME from MoonSatellite. Those who are familiar with the musical universe of Lone Wolf know of what his music is forged. For those who aren't, it's strongly influenced by Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene/Equinoxe era. Except that MISSING TIME is different. It's a union of romantic and cosmic French School with a more exploratory Berlin School of the Klaus Schulze years, more particularly his period Blackdance and especially Body Love. But chiefly, it's a superb album set by three wonderful tracks which throne very well above the five movements of MISSING TIME.
Winds with twisted curls roll in a cosmic mood where plaintive voices float in an electronic environment which sounds as a fusion of Oxygene and Magnetic Fields from Jarre open the corridors of the Milky Ways which immerge the very long first part of MISSING TIME. The opening is simply delicious with this cosmic atmosphere which seems frozen in a black hole. The impression of being totally to immerse in a cosmic fauna is very absorbing, especially with headphones. And from the first stammerings of sequences which move forward stealthily, Missing Time I entails us in the slow morphic spiral of the analog years. The rhythm is soft. Hyper soft! It climbs the staircases of time embalmed by angelic choruses and lunar ambiences which flirt stunningly with those of Jarre. Supplied with its airtight pulsations the rhythm follows its upward curve, floating with an enthralling weightlessness in a mishmash cosmic consisted of the sound elements of this interstellar poetry which lulled so much our dreams. We are definitively farther than in paradise. Everything is present; cosmic choir, trail of stars powders, metallic rain, cosmic gases and interstellar noises. MoonSatellite lays a dreamlike sweetness on his delicate rhythmic structure which swirls so puny in its cosmic embryo. And the choir is impenetrable, so much that the density of the octaves brings us there where the great names of vintage EM had mislaid us. The first 10 minutes are some superb cosmic bright spells, while that quietly the rhythm wakes up with echo loops which bump into one another and wave such as childish rhymes cooing with innocence on the jingles of cymbals. These cosmic waves which interlace and bubble with passion bear the strikings of percussions and hear another line of sequence, more melodious, crawling over their sound magma while that other percussions, more frank and more incisive, cut the rhythm to propel it higher, farther. This new portion of rhythm forms a sulphurous symbiosis with the cosmic elements while its progression brings us near Klaus Schulze on his majestic Body Love. And we remain tranquil. Bewildered by this permutation of the ambiences towards this movement supported by strikings of percussions which fragment this approach introduced at around the 10th minute and where Jarre crosses an Adelbert Von Deyen strongly filled by Klaus Schulze influences. The synth solos loosen the harmonies while that the tempo is increasing towards the stars, rooting for ever the delights forgotten by the analog era that MoonSatellite has found in the attic of his inspirations. Magical and it's worth alone the purchase of MISSING TIME. But there are other things on this album.
Missing Time II offers a more repulsive intro where heterogeneous noises are waltzing like metal sheets which twist themselves of fear. We hear a bass line to pulse far off, while that some warmer, harmonious sonic elements appear in this sound wreck which derives towards the unknown. The orchestrations are beautiful and, little by little, revive the deformed tones of an intro which quietly falls over a beautiful interstellar sonata. A line of bass sequence is pulsating a little before the 10th minute, sweeping the last breaths of a choir forgotten in the rests of the intro. Another line of sequences binds itself, making oscillate its keys in a bouncy pattern of meshing and weaving linear movements which undulate constantly on the counterweight of their sedentary impulses. And Missing Time II gallops awkwardly on its evasive rhythm. A rhythm dressed in lines of sequences among which the piling up and the interlacing call the unreal to these more concrete forms where hammered sequences and sustained percussions beat lasciviously under the harmonies of a synth as much morphic as lyrical. Missing Time III is definitively my very favorite on MISSING TIME. It's a beautiful cosmic down-tempo, a beautiful lunar ballad with percussions of which the echo of their knocks gets lost in some astral sweetnesses. The harmonies are so fragile that they are sawing our legs! And a splendid, but a splendid synth line comes to reveal a shy melody which sighs at night and brings us where only we want to be. Fabulous! Less accessible, Missing Time IV lets marinade its intro in a crowd of electronic tones which are familiar to us. We hear Jarre, Vangelis (Invisible Connections) and even Kraftwerk when the tears of violins come to shake the influence of our souvenirs (I hear some Thierry Fervant there) and let a voice of astral siren enchant our soul with one of these unique melodies to the French dramatic and poetic cinema. Evasive and morphic the tempo explodes with fed percussions and sequences which skip in the step of others, so shaping a down-tempo which lets its slow rhythm feed on seething sequences. These feverish sequences stamp in their shadows of rhythm, creating an implosive rhythmic symmetry which accepts gladly the caresses of the astral and seraphic voices, adding a surprising poetic dimension to a track to the rather eclectic origins. Missing Time V is an ambient ode to Jean Michel Jarre. We find in it all of his major eras on an ambiosphérique structure which floats and floats with all the wealth of its influences.
Wonderful and totally amazing. MISSING TIME is a superb album which seems to go out quite straight ahead of time. The way that the five structures bicker for our souvenirs of Jarre, Schulze, Vangelis and Kraftwerk is simply exquisite and makes of this, an album rather unique where the increasing rhythms extricate themselves from cosmic atmospheres to make roll their dislocated skeletons, as their attractive down-tempo, in long structures where abound lunar melodies that will make pour sighs of the soul. It's very good, even excellent and highly recommendable.
Sylvain Lupari (May 15th, 2013) *****
Available at MoonSatellite Bandcamp