“This album is built around a very poetic musical vision which fills its imaginations as much as we perceive it”
1 Array of fadin´ Flowers 4:37
2 Knock Knock 4:32
3 Alucard 4:36
4 Mental Undead 2:52
5 Waving goodbye, waving waving 3:37
6 Demeter-morph 3:07
7 Sleep well, Elisabeth 7:34
8 Celebrating fears Part IV 2:53
9 Scholomance Trance 3:49
10 Vlad, Anton, Ruediger 3:11
11 Yersenia sea 4:13
12 Ligeias wake 4:27
13 Lucy and the shy diabolos 2:53
14 Liliths cradlesong 8:31
15 The end of the end of everything 5:59
(CD 66:51) (V.F.)
(Gothic EM, Post E-Rock)
(NB: This review was written in the times I tried to shorten them)
For its second opus, Picture Palace Music (TD's Thorsten Quaeschning band), pursues his musical exploration of the German expressionism cinema's underground world. After the work of Robert Wiene (Das Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), Thorsten Quaeschning is now inspired by the vampiric work of Friedrich Wilhelm; Nosferatu the Vampire (Nosferatu, eine Symphony of Grauens). Electronic symphony or electronic opera, PPM offers 66 minutes of well structured music where breaths of the blood suckers hoot in a musical fauna which combine as well contemporary EM, techno and symphonic rock on melodious structures where nostalgia flatters an eclectic strength.
Soft felted percussions open Array of Fadin´ Flowers. The rhythm is light. A soft and sensual techno which swirls delicately, becoming much heavier with fine hatched riffs and a romantic guitar which spreads its notes in loops on strata of a synth filled of eerie vocalizes. After a sparkling intro, Knock Knock bursts on good percussions, freeing a heavy atmosphere on a throbbing tempo with a good pulsating bass which opens the path to an aggressive guitar. A melodiously heavy track where the memotron combines vocal orchestrations and harmonies. Alucard looks like a dialogue between mythical presences on a tempo fractured by several rolls of drums and a guitar harmoniously celestial that makes the charm all along this PPM's 2nd opus. Mental Undead, just like Celebrating fears Part IV, follows a dark hysterico-psychedelic corridor which leads to the very beautiful and melancholic Waving Goodbye, Waving Waving. A superb track of an apocalyptic softness which really points out vampiric odes, as well as on Sleep well, Elisabeth and Yersenia Sea; ambient music which seem to get out from Nosferatu's hypnotic mists and where the guitars howl distress to feel one's blood run cold. Liliths Cradlesong is a symphony for piano filled of chthonian atmosphere. It is a little long, without rhythm and life… a bit like if Nosferatu doze of its last meal. From astral ambient that haunts our ears, Demeter-Morph and Scholomance Trance light fires of rhythms with good percussions, good guitars and jerky synth twists which embers in a superb orchestrations. Heavy tracks which are inserted between mephistophelic nebulosity's and lighter tracks like Vlad, Anton, Ruediger and Ligeias Wake as well as The End of the End of Everything which sails between synth pop and techno, whereas Lucy and the Shy Diabolos is a good heavy techno.
Thorsten Quaeschning's PPM continues to amaze. He has a very poetic musical vision which fills its imaginations as well as we perceive it. SYMPHONY FOR VAMPIRES is a great album of a contemporary music which flees the stereotypes to charm, astonish and touch.
Sylvain Lupari (January 24th, 2011) ***¾**
Available at Manikin Records