“What we have here is a splendid album at the height of these major works in EM which land here and there in the corridors of time”
1 Ionic Shadows 9:48 2 The Taste of your Soul 21:48 3 De Si Loin...(From So Far...) 9:28 4 Le Délire de Vieillir (Delirium of Aging) 18:19 5 Audiophetamine (Jamais Vu) 7:53 Neuronium Music
(CD 67:27) (V.F.) (Vintage Neuronium Music)
A 42nd album! How can we forget Michel Huygen's name when we speak about dominant figure in EM? Whether it's in solo or with Neuronium, the Spanish musician always manages to sign works of a sound elegance as much troubling as intrusive. More comfortable with the immense sleep-inducing layers that wrap us with their wings always musical than with a music led by movements of sequences, Michel Huygen, like for Neuronium, has signed works of simply divine meditative atmospheres. The last one in the running being Nocny Lot; a mainly ambient opus which hid some very beautiful movements of sequences clearly more harmonious than rhythmic. It's a bit much the skeleton of JAMAIS VU but with some exceptions which are so much going to amaze you than to charm you. And believe in me, both go hand in hand here.
Drops falling from the skies click and resound in iodine vapors. A voice of goddess spreads its anesthetic perfume, being friends with these layers of ether which draw these psychotronic brooks which bear the Neuronium seal. The voice is deeply moving with acute chants of which the electronic tremors resound under the hold of the soporific layers. Other layers, more enveloping, enclose our senses. Like analgesic shadows, they cross our hearing curiosity with a tone embroidered in the sulfur and these perfumes of imperfect trumpets of the vintage years. It's a return in time! We really are in these floating and evasive layers of the years 70-80, but with a breath of contemporaneousness. Beatings go out from this sedative hold towards the 5th minute. Ambient, the rhythm unfolds its sequences which zigzag in symbiosis with synth solos from which the magic singings resound in our ears as those of former days. It feels good to hear a synth to do something other than effects! The introduction of The Taste of your Soul plunges us into the phases of this ambient and very meditative music of Neuronium. The lines synth, always perfumed by some psychotronic essences of Michel Huygen, are floating with such a heaviness that we feel their hold on our feelings. Very musical, the Spanish musician lays solos with the scents of these 70's tones. Incisive and poignant solos from which the slow winged movements embrace the chants full of serenity from a seraphic choir which murmurs sweetness and tenderness to our ears. Here, the ambient music takes another dimension with a very intrusive identity which banishes any kind of abstract or atonal music and where the serenity and the harmony merges until sequences are pounding softly around the 12th minute. The movement remains so quiet, except that lines of sequences are winding the ambiences, like lost steps in search of a den. The movement is light. One would say angels who chase each other, who embrace themselves and push themselves away in a hypnagogic dance which refuses a minimalist influence, weaving even a harmonious pattern as much seraphic that of the most tender lullabies.
De Si Loin...(From So Far...) begins with a thick cloud of hollow winds which dissipate in order to make room to synth layers which go round in circle like keen oscillatory waves. It's a dance of the winds which slows the pace in a wall of slow winged caresses of which the shadows are floating softly like a sigh of an insuperable sorrow. Other shadows accompany this procession of melancholy. They whistle, like to bring a touch of pleasure which spreads with the liveliness of the songs from the wind which decorated the intro. A brief moment of enjoyment which is tarnished with the arrival of glass arpeggios which clink for an ambient and a crystalline melody, irradiating so these gloomy atmospheres drawn by a synth to the breaths as melancholic as Vangelis' dark corridors of sadness. Playing a little on the same parameter of time and on the same kind of dreamlike structure as on The Taste of your Soul, Le Délire de Vieillir (Delirium of Aging) proposes also a long ambient overture knotted around layers of voices and electronic psychotronic effects. Delicate arpeggios are ringing and trumpeting a soft astral melody around the 15th minute. The chords resound with a fascinating duel between their shadows, sculpturing a superb and delicious monument of tenderness which crunches you the soul. Splendid! One would say stars which try to comfort our fear of dying. After a very pastoral intro, which collapses under the weight of a monks' chorus, Audiophetamine (Jamais Vu) extricates itself from the oblivion as a skeleton which gathers again its bones. Electronic chords spit tones of which the shadows crackle of white noises. These radiances weave a sound mosaic which is of use as background to a pastoral electronic hymn where the chorus slams their hands like in a kind of a very lively, but speechless, gospel. Between Techno, Soul and Funk, Audiophetamine (Jamais Vu) destroys our loudspeakers with a lively and heavy structure where the knocks of bass percussions and the bangings of hands unite the fire of their passion in a superb electronic rock which turns us upside down as never Neuronium has made it. Delirious and really powerful!
What we have here my friends is a great album! No matter the kind, the style. JAMAIS VU is a splendid album to the measure of Michel Huygen's multiple passions for life, his loves, his friendships and his love of the art. Some EM! Yes and not of any kind. The one which stands out and which gives this second breath to an art, and this always no matter the kind, which always needs to resource itself in order to get fresh ideas. Yes, my friends ... a very strong album!
Sylvain Lupari (February 26th, 2016) *****
Available at Neuronium and CD Baby