“Only master on board, Mythos tells us his musical tales with a sound wealth that honours his mythical reputation”
1 Surround Sound Passion 4:14
2 Roots and Rocks 5:29
3 Mythosiaka 4:49
4 Heart of the Action 4:48
5 Jinba Ittai 7:16
6 Perpetuum Mythos 5:23
7 Filter Sequence Wah Flute 8:30
8 Free Panda! (Part-1) Caged 3:17
9 Free Panda! (Part-2) The Liberation 6:50
10 Mytho Space 8:47
11 Das Zeitgeheimnis Part-3 (Bonus Track) 5:33
12 Fukushima Sea (Live) (Bonus Track) 8:20
(CD 60:16) (V.F.)
(New Berlin School)
Four years have passed by between the last note of the boiling Surround Sound Offensive and this second part of a series of opus to be conceived in the sound dynamism of the Surround Sound Dolby Pro Logic 8. During that time, Mythos wasn't at not doing anything. On the contrary! The one that we can easily compare to a German Jean-Michel Jarre gave a series of shows in diverse planetariums and festivals onto a period of 18 months. This visibility has awakened a lot of curiosity among local medias besides charming and conquering a legion of new fans. In this stride came 2 albums in concert with unreleased music on each; Gallery Concerts in 2009 and Unabsteigbar! in 2010 as well as an excellent reedition of Quasar (a cult Krautrock album) and an album in concert that Mythos had given during its Krautrock era; Superkraut Live on 1976. It's in January 2012 that Stephan Kaske attacked Surround Sound Offensive's suite. And nearly 10 months later emerges a powerful album. Conceived in the same mould of the diversified rhythms that were flooded in an extremely rich sound envelope SURROUND SOUND EVOLUTION explodes even more with 12 original titles, among which 2 bonus tracks, which are the witnesses of a wonderful musical tale which exceeds the most daring sound adventures.
Surround Sound Passion crosses our orbits with a powerful crystalline line of which the violent oscillations crisscross on heavy robotics hammerings. The rhythm is heavy and powerful. Static it's fed by pulsations which resound among chatters of a vocoder of which the twisted word lines espouse the intertwined tangents of a title that we can hardly labelled so much it is violent and robotic. More musical and more melodious, but still quite heavy, Roots and Rocks gallops on more fluid harmonious approaches. As a totally delirious chef in his messy kitchen, Mythos sprinkles his indomitable structures of a pinch of quirky tones and related percussions that are flavoring his gargantuan rhythmic impulses. After this well seasoned rhythmic entry, Mythosiaka stands out with an approach closer of a ballad style. But as all that revolves around this fascinating sound fresco that is SURROUND SOUND EVOLUTION, nothing is commonplace nor quiet. It's a great down-tempo, quite as the very cosmic and filmic Perpetuum Mythos and its fusion of 80's/10's sound fauna, with glass sequences which drone out time in a rhythm swirling as a delicate ballerina on a steel wire. The synth, always mislaid between its lines of words and its para-psychedelic wanderings, delivers a real battle between harmony and delirium, quite like in Heart of the Action which is taken in a rhythmic gearing between hip-hop and a languishing funk with jolts à la JM Jarre (Rendez-vous). Running on two themes Jinba Ittai announces an intro tinted of drama while quietly the tempo deviates towards the hop and skips of a hip-hop and a cosmic down-tempo.
With its Kraftwerk intro à la Trans-Europe-Express, Filter Sequence Wah Flute offers an electronic approach closer to the Berlin School with a rhythmic line which swirls in the luxurious mists of the analog cosmic atmospheres. Light synth pads and cosmic gases embrace the fragrances of Tangerine Dream while the rhythmic structure, moving forward with the evolutionary pace of a train, guides us towards a concert for celestial flutes. As honeyed than hypnotic! Free Panda! (Part-1) Caged offers a delicate melody tinted of oriental fragrances. The movement is without rhythm but is boiling of metallic jingles. One would say spoon of glasses that click together and which ring in a funny lunar step. The end is melting into Free Panda! (Part-2) The Liberation which is more fiery, although rather static, waving of its heavy lines in a fanciful musical universe. Mytho Space is a small jewel of New Berlin School which is going to please those who miss the beautiful years of the Mergener/Weisser duet (Software). The rhythm is morphic. Swirling of its sequences in a rhythmic drawing of spiral stocked with fragmented ions, it rolls like a slow fuel-fired train adrift in a cosmos illuminated with musical stars and ethereal galactic breezes which serve as basis to a smoky cosmic Berlin School. It's very good. Very intense, Das Zeitgeheimnis Part-3 is a bonus track which beats of its heavy reverberating pulsations. The rhythm is curt and jerky, jumping on the spot into a rhythmic universe to incongruous hybridities with huge extraterrestrials cawing, rattlesnake's percussions and sequence lines which are crisscrossing in some parallel rhythms, feeding a structure as much ambivalent as fascinating. The sound dimension is at its zenith with good earphones. Fukushima Sea (Live) is the other bonus track. The rhythm is Babylonian and leans on symphonic drums and static sequences which resound and ring in a rich cinematographic and orchestral universes where the whales of the Japan Sea are cooing in profound musical waters.
Only master on board of a musical adventure molded in the excesses of his fantasias, Mythos tells us his musical tales with a sound wealth that honours his mythical reputation. Surfing on the fragrances of Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, Stephan Kaske presents 12 musical structures which boil in a parallelism as rhythmic as harmonious among which fine variances and subtleties are in the heart of the charms of SURROUND SOUND EVOLUTION; a powerful album that will meet all your expectations of sound fantasies and beyond...
Sylvain Lupari (December 4th, 2012) *****
Available at Sireena Records