“Exploration Spatiale vogues in the spheres of an EM which has preceded these sequenced movements of the early 70's, either in a dark ambient music”
1 Pulsar 6:48 2 Proxima Centauri 11:04 3 Dawn 7:25 4 Pioneer 10's Journey 7:20 5 Timescape 18:16 6 Quasar 9:36 Mutagenese Music
(DDL 60:28) (V.F.) (Dark Cosmic Ambient EM)
After a very convincing first album (Errance Planétaire), which marked those who made the discovery of Mutagénèse in cosmic strolls driven by some good old Berlin School, the Canadian group, established in Montreal, picks up where he has left these ears amazed by this first album. Distinctly more ambient, quieter with weak rhythmic impulses forged on mesmerizing and exciting movements for the neurons, EXPLORATION SPATIALE is built around cosmic wind storms and micro-planets' decays which become islands of interstellar parasites whistling and breaking through into a universe exposed at 1,000 threats. This second album of Mutagenese pushes even more the reflection of the Montreal band on the confines of the space with slowly movements inflated of an industrial sound fauna where the reality crosses the fiction with layers of caramelized voices in chthonic atmospheres. Less accessible, this album requires an open mind for an EM whose cradle is located just before the immortal Phaedra by Tangerine Dream.
Ambient?! It's not this impression that forms between our ears from the opening of Pulsar and its rhythm structure that in the end one says to oneself: Yah ... Why not? Because it's rather conforms to several pieces of music of the same name in the world of EM! This rhythm is tied very tight in a series of hiccups whose spasmodic impulses forge a rhythmic sequence that is associated with a cavalry on a mined battlefield. The soundscape spreads its analog fragrances in a rich texture from which emerges a phase of rowdy ambiances and a finale where are screaming the void and its anger. This wind makes blowing its tenebrous breezes into Proxima Centauri where slow keyboard riffs wander between two worlds. The movement is slow, very contemplative and unwinds its ambient sound carpet with delicate oscillations which drift in a galaxy near you. The breezes in Dawn seem more hollow, even sibylline, and blow on a flora of cosmic tweets. This opening brood a beat whose mechanical pulse initiates the blossoming of a sonic life. An industrial life in fact with its carbon oiled layers and sounds of machinery flirting with the unreal, either a choir of fallen angels who hum upon the rollings of a virgin water which runs aground on an emerald beach. Ambient, this rhythm awakens our attention quite well, since we notice its absence when Dawn drifts into a black hole before reconnecting with the elements of its sonic genesis. Pioneer 10's Journey is a purely ambient track with a pretty good palette of tones and colors in the many breezes and winds of Orion that blow through the drifting obstacles and broken hoops of some planets. Aside from this delightful lunar melody of about 60 seconds, sculpted in ascending sequences of opaline tones and enveloped of maternal whispers, Timescape offers an intense drift into a dark cosmos. The elements hiss and roar like those big meteors and their distress symphonies when they destroy everything on their unplanned flights. Quasar ends EXPLORATION SPATIALE with a muffled rhythmic structure that survives painfully in an interstellar storm.
If Errance Planétaire was a splendid album of rhythms pushed by a creative sequencer, EXPLORATION SPATIALE vogues in the spheres of an EM which has preceded these animated movements of the early 70's. It's a drifting, a floating EM where the cosmic elements are presented with a lot of details in the sounds, so much that one plunges unwittingly into the darkness of the cosmos. It's an adventure, a cosmic exploration driven by some intense moments of music and other more oneiric phases. For fans of ambient music and of cosmic ambiences ...
Sylvain Lupari (December 26th, 2018) *****
Available at Mutagénèse Bandcamp