PHROZENLIGHT: Mindstorm (2009)

“A mix of Schulze with the rhythms of Redshift, Mindstorm must be my favorite album since I discovered the universe of Phrozenlight”

1 Dawnwind 29:21

2 Shifting Sand 47:02

Phrozenlight Music

(DDL 76:22) (V.F.)

(Berlin School)

MINDSTORM is an album that gets close to one of the inspirations of Bert Phrozenlight Hulshof; Klaus Schulze. From its first cosmic waves, Dawnwind sucks us in the whirlwinds of its space waves. An intro that floats with the waves drifting from the synth which is inspired by the ether universe of the first works of the famous German musician. The movement is hypnotized by the serenity of the enveloping layers, from which the first drummed sequences escape. The timid beats are dampened by the opacity of the sound sails which tightly enclose the introductory life of Dawnwind. This nice introduction becomes clearer and more musical with its analogous scents which follow the heavy reverberations and the synth loops scattered. Around the 12th minute, the percussions become more rhythmic in a more animated phase. Surrounded by a mellotron with dense and drifting vapors, the rhythm gets heavier with a strong bass line which hammers Dawnwind with its reverberant chords by pushing it into a heavy Redshift crescendo. These heavy and infernal rhythms constantly eat up Dawnwind's progression up until a quieter final whose ambient phases gently put her to sleep until the circles of intersidereal dust.

To date, each Phrozenlight album hides its epic title of 50 minutes.

Shifting Sand confirms this rule in MINDSTORM. A title just as much sequenced but lighter than Dawnwind, it's bathed into an analog ambience full of undulating and enveloping strata. From beautiful Berlin School flavored with sails and musical canvases to Klaus Schulze which embraces a long passage of atmospheric elements around the 22nd minute. A lifeless passage where the misty vapors disperse, revealing a nervous sequence which gallops slightly on the back of synth layers filled of sound dust and reminiscences of the Blackdance universe. A universe of uncertain EM where the lifeless feeds on eclectic tones and heavy reverberation residues in order to prepare the passage of a fiery movement of the sequencer which raises the dust left behind the surging sequences of Dawnwind.

Since I discovered his universe, MINDSTORM is my favorite album of Phrozenlight. The Dutch synthesist leaves his ambient style to offer a heavy musical texture full of rhythms which swap with heaviness, between the metallic sinuosity of Klaus Schulze's beginning up until the power of Redshift's sequencer attacks. A very good album, with lengths that could annoy some listeners. But lengths which are good staging to music with heavy twists and without appeals. Like with Dreamland, the album is available on Internet, we must dig and dig, or by contacting Burt via the Bandcamp site of Phrozenlight.

Sylvain Lupari (September 10th, 2009) *****

SynthSequences.com

Informations could be find at Phrozenlight Bandcamp