“This is a solid CD which has this musical link to Nattefrost' s period 06 to 10”
1 Dendrophile - Hug the Trees 4:06
2 Defend the Nature 3:52
3 When every Cage is Empty 4:50
4 Eternal Winter (Feat. Fenriz & Sadomancer) 12:30
5 Midnight Forest 8:21
6 The Great Intelligence of Trees 4:34
7 Beautiful Landscapes 3:23
8 Save the Planet - Go Vegan 3:41
9 A lone Bear in a Windy Forest 1:20
(CD/LP/Tape/DDL 46:42) (V.F.)
(EDM, Cosmic Rock, Berlin School)
Already a 16th opus from Nattefrost! It seems to me that it was yesterday that I was reviewing Absorbed In Dreams And Yearning. And it's interesting because we can establish a parallel between this album and DENDROPHILE which offers a wide range of rhythms with good incursions in the Berlin School style. Paying homage to nature, its fauna and animals, have been the main inspiration for Nattefrost since the release of his Maxi Single Defend the Nature last fall. He subsequently released a new single, When every Cage is Empty, a month later. With this in mind, Bjorn Jeppesen would lay down the inspirations for his new CD, which is also available on vinyl, tape and download, DENDROPHILE. This new lover and protector of trees still offers electronic music (EM) made to make people dance and chill while remembering what made him known to the general public; catchy tracks with melodies built on good synth lines.
Sampling of forest with birds chirping and wind rustling on the leaves join an orchestral wave wanting to waltz a la Johann Strauss. Chords get in to leap and gauzy percussion effects call for a bass-sequence line to jump into a structure of danceable music that is trapped in the half circles of a waltz that will never complete its loops. Dendrophile - Hug the Trees ends to take off in the 10th second into its first minute. Inspired by Jean-Michel Jarre, the rhythm becomes more driving with a flight of cosmic synth layers. Defend the Nature has not changed, nor has The Great Intelligence of Trees (read the review on Defend the Nature). It's been a while since I received the single When every Cage is Empty, but I didn't really know where to put it in a review. It's a very techno track in the Kraftwerk style. Curt and jerky rhythm with good synth pads just as jerky. The keyboard lays a melody easy to remember. The fans of the Düsseldorf quartet should love it. Fenriz and Sadomancer lend their voices and throat singing in Eternal Winter. This long dynamic track is in the pure EDM tradition with beautiful synth lines and great synth solos on a circular and finely stroboscopic sequencer structure which drops a cloud of brightly flickering keys before guiding the track to its transition phase around the 7th minute. The ambiences remain cosmic with waasshh and wiisshh before diving back into a phase more trance than techno.
Each album of Nattefrost has beautiful little jewels and Midnight Forest is in the category of the beautiful titles of his catalog with an electronic rhythm which makes dance our neurons that are amazed by this splendid spectral melody of the synth. This melody stretches at times into long catchy solos that remind us of the beautiful analog years of EM. Simply brilliant! And followed by The Great Intelligence of Trees and its influence guided by the best percussive moments of the Poland finale, it's even better. Very intense in a clan dance or tribal war anthem kind of way, Beautiful Landscapes destabilizes the listening with a percussion play whose brief military rolls confront an aggressive bent sequence line to dominate a wild Groove. The synth layers cast a cosmic aura over this disarticulating rhythmic backbone that also flirts with solid, lively Hip-Hop, even with that injection of good, hazy orchestration layers. It's a vocoder that introduces the cosmic ambiences of Save the Planet - Go Vegan. Percussive effects clatter and the keyboard throws in a suite of fat, resonant chords that bounce and waddle, structuring a stationary rhythm in a cosmic haze. The percussions and its jingling reorient the structure towards a techno while the fat chords continue to resonate under good synth loops. The cosmic voices plunge us into the beautiful ambient universe of Robert Schroeder. The winds of A lone Bear in a Windy Forest describe amply the title!
DENDROPHILE is a solid CD from Nattefrost. I found it superior to Secrets of the Universe precisely because of that musical link to the splendid Absorbed In Dreams And Yearning. The range of rhythms should not frighten too much those who dislike techno or EDM since the cosmic atmospheres and this element inseparable from his period 2006 to 2010 give a nobility to this album which should allow Bjorn Jeppesen to make a noticed comeback in the circles of the followers of Jarre, Schroeder and of a daring, explosive, melodious and catchy EM
Sylvain Lupari (23/02/22) ****½*
Available at Nattefrost Bandcamp