“Shade is a good album of a music which hides some beautiful melodies that make of darkness something a bit more comfortable”
1 Frightening Frontiers 5:42
2 Entities 6:30
3 A Moment Frozen 2:16
4 Mutating Realities 10:32
5 Compulsive Mechanics 5:38
6 Not Being Mirrored 8:25
7 Shade 6:02
8 Urgency 8:25
9 Towards 5:09
10 Ungreat Certainty 3:48
(CD/DDL 62:49) (V.F.)
(Dark Ambient, Berlin School)
Two years after the surprising and daring Obsessive Surrealism, Parallel Worlds (Bakis Sirros) presents SHADE; a 5th opus with shadows and their unknown borders as a backdrop. Still using a vast array of instruments, both digital and analogue, this sorcerer of ambiguous sounds explores the recesses of the dark. A daring subject to cover over a distance of 63 minutes.
Frightening Frontiers starts things up with a soft, hypnotic rhythm and its echoes effects. The percussions' work is efficient and accompanies a neurotic bass line which inspires a mad rush in the pernicious corridors of increasing anguish with tones as variegated as intriguing, crossing the dramatic and latent schizophrenia. The arrangements are strikingly realistic, going to the last breaths of a neurotic out of breath. Entities continues this exploration of nocturnal fears with jerky sequenced arrangements, creating an imprecise rhythm that follows a tangent a bit like on Frightening Frontiers. But with a more jazzed up texture, more lounge, thanks to a bass which treads misty paths and a piano with charming notes which coo in a dark atmosphere for such a beautiful melodious line. A nice mix between Spyra and Vangelis. A Moment Frozen is a dark and disturbing title with its approach filled of a static state and of circular loops on guttural sound effects. Always imbued with a very effective sound research, Mutating Realities is a long walk in the winding corridors of the complex world of shadows and darkness. Gradually, the title gains in crescendo, starting from a fearful approach with sensual outlines to the tactile exploration of fear. Bakis Sirros may well lighten the mood with a TD flute mellotron, but the result remains much the same, especially with the addition of the most motley sound effects to date on SHADE.
With its percussions with slightly anvil tones, brandishing the specter of ghostly chains, Compulsive Mechanics is a title which evolves in a heavy and abstract structure. Despite this fashion, and this surrealist world, a strange macabre melody emerges from this industrial musical approach. That is this kind of title to listen to in high definition, in order to swallow all the sonic subtleties that flow lazily. An intriguing bass opens Not Being Mirrored which progresses in a parallel sound universe, but with an approach constantly in search of a melody of the shadows. A melody which makes its nest among a panoply of composite tones, including a guitar which lets its chords wander here and there and which opens the passage between realism and fantasy. The title-track shows a good minimalism melody flowing from a melancholy piano and a harmless percussions line in a sound fauna unique to Parallel Worlds. After this sweetness, why not an explosion initiated by a neurotic walk? Indescribable, Urgency bursts our eardrums with a restrained violence and symmetrical loops which fly over a nervous and explosive but hesitant rhythm. A restraint that sucks the passion of fear and ending in an uncomfortably metallic softness. Towards and Ungreat Certainty conclude in relative calm. Dark and hovering ambient with threatening bits inserted here and there, just to recall the context of this 5th opus of Parallel Worlds which never ceases to amaze with its musical approach as curious as melodious.
Stories to sleep upright, stories of fear without words, SHADE is a solid album of a music more contemporary than pure electronic which confuses more than once because of a sound depth which exceeds our waitings and imprecise rhythms which are situate in a genre of Psybient for weirdos. Dark Psybient which hides beautiful melodies, making the darkness a little more sympathetic.
Sylvain Lupari (April 24th, 2009) ***¾**
Disponible au DiN Bandcamp