MOONSATELLITE: Whispers of the Moon (2015)

“Yet, this is another strong opus from MoonSatellite who never stop to amaze...even after a splendid album of French Cosmic EM”

1 Sequences are Beautiful 10:43 2 Voices of the Moon 15:14 3 Shadows Part I 12:44 4 Midnight Motion 6:55 5 Shadows Part II 11:38 6 Whispers of the Moon 12:30 7 Shadows Part III 5:06 MoonSatellite Music | MS005

(CD 74:50) (V.F.) (French School cosmic rock)

And if the wonderful Sleep Awake wasn't anymore the best album of MoonSatellite! The strength of Lone Wolf is from an album to another, the synth wizard from Nantes overflies his style by exploiting at the most the capacities of his equipments. New ones as old ones! Always draped by this interstellar approach where the electronic chirpings of Jean-Michel Jarre and Klaus Schulze merge in envelopes of cosmic rock tinted by French romanticism, MoonSatellite goes at the end of his resources to offer an EM where the vintage has always airs of Youth. Doubtless imagined in the dark corridors of Sleep Awake, WHISPERS OF THE MOON floats nevertheless at the other end of its specter with a livelier approach where the crystalline reflections of the shadows get loose and illuminate some great structures of cosmic rhythms always so exhilarating.

Titan's breezes, a little like trumpets of the nothingness, jostle in our ears at opening of Sequences are Beautiful. Tears of synth squeak in intense hummings, a little as if the galaxy switched off the lights of the lives, while little by little MoonSatellite throws the assizes of his last album. Faithful to the signature of the cosmic poets of France, Lone Wolf surrounds his structures of a thick cloud of tones all borrowed to the dialect of stars and its mother-homeland, the Cosmos. Waves of violins enclose our senses of slow morphic caresses, while always these stars paw the ground in the abysses of a more and more penetrating Black Hole. A line of bass trembles. The movement is suddenly weighted down by resonant pulsations of which the instinctive beatings of the keys scare off these sonic strands which unfurl like trains ghosts. The rhythm which follows is as ambient as anesthetic, as in a cosmic trance. The pulsations which resound are dropping some shinier shadows which sparkle in the heavy echoes of the beatings, aligning two adjoining lines filled of opposite charms and contrasting tones. The orchestral pads float like banks of astral mist or still like displeased murmurs of Titan's breezes and the pulsating keys spit an always analgesic rhythmic poison, making our senses slave by the charms of a tranquil rhythmic ballet where everything buzzes and implodes without ever overflowing. The final, tinted with the influences of the old Schulze and of a cosmic Jarre, brings us delicately to the morphic envelope of Voices of the Moon. A short moment of rhythmic aphasia before that some crystalline sequences are making their impatient shadows spinning in the circular suctions of the Black Hole. The sonic embrace is especially immensely enveloping and very rich with pads of violins and faded voices which throw a veil as dramatic as very melancholic where are whistling delicate solos, quite hampered to disrupt the more or less dark ambiences of their secret harmonies. While the crystal-clear sequences make shine their insistences of silvery jingles, Voices of the Moon sinks into a phase of peaceful turbulence with a superb line of bass sequences which skip like the Loch Ness fed for week. The synth tears float like gloves of organ, the jingles forge slugs to the twinkling singings and the percussions tame the big snake of the seas which shakes now of good nervous jolts. From ambient, the skeleton of Voices of the Moon becomes delicately lively with a structure of rhythm which skips in an intense sonic pattern where no second is forgotten in this art that has MoonSatellite to dress his structures of thousand attributes and splendors, in particular with beautiful solos filled by very airy caresses. And this, even in ambiospherical phases like this finale where cry these slugs in the embraces of the astral violins. If our demands are filled, our ears are always hungry. The best is yet to come!

Shadows is the core of WHISPERS OF THE MOON. Its opening sparkles like a concert of stars trying to communicate with celestial bodies. The reflections of this dialogue fill our ears of a shower which scatters scrupulously its silvered drops on a carpet of metal. We even forget this dance of sequences which alternate the measure in a kind of collective waddling, giving birth to a structure of fluid rhythm which undulates such as an interstellar train. And always these silvery drops! Percussions bind themselves, feeding even more the greediness of a structure which multiplies its shadows to thwart our ears. And always these silvery drops! Now they sing. They sing with faded voices, thus structuring the nerve of the multiple charms of Shadows Part I-II-III. The rhythm softens its race, undulating more peacefully in an astral phase where the synths caress now this rain of prisms which always breaks us the heart of beautiful solos always very ethereal. It's the apotheosis my friends. If you like these convoluted cosmic structures of rhythms where the connections are made in the subtleties, you will be crazy about this album. And it's not over. No! MoonSatellite still caresses our senses with a nymphet which charms the astral elements of the finale. What a track! Midnight Motion takes back the road of our amazement with a spasmodic structure knotted around a swarm of swirling sequences among which the contrasting tones and the nuances in the oscillations spin, or gallop, as being sucked up by the greediness of the cosmos. Here still the sound wealth is always outclassed by the rich elements of the next minutes. Shadows Part II multiplies the charms of the first part with a rhythm always so lively, but which is crowned of new attributes. The singing of prisms always strengthens this state of servitude of our hearing for this fabulous cosmic earworm. And quietly we go adrift towards the title-track and of its structure of breakneck pace which extricates itself from a long ambiospherical introduction. The alternation in the sequences, both in tones and in the jumps, is always so exhilarating. And it's even more when coupled to these chloroformed waves which invade the astral waves of Whispers of the Moon. Shadows Part III ends the story with a sweet cosmic down-tempo where the orchestrations replace the singings of the prisms without hiding all the effects of charms.

Solid my friends! WHISPERS OF THE MOON is a solid album where the wealth of the sonic envelope and the nuances, both in the ambiences and in the rhythms, is making of it an album of a rare intensity. An album which has the gift to amaze at each listening. Don't you find a nice parallel with MoonSatellite's albums? The rhythms, as ambient as lively, live in an electronic placenta which gets fresh ideas in every new bubble of life which burst on the horizon, making of this album an inescapable in the kind of cosmic rock rooted to the French School. And I think of it suddenly.... If WHISPERS OF THE MOON would not either be the best of MoonSatellite? I would not be the first one surprised because this Lone Wolf has a heck of talent!

Sylvain Lupari (October 22nd, 2015) *****

SynthSequences.com

Available at MoonSatellite's Bandcamp