“It's an album well divided between rhythms and ambient phases”
1 Through the Planck Era 8:19
2 The God Particle's Dance 5:43
3 Let There be Light 14:07
4 Islands of the Universe 21:08
5 We Live Here 6:32
6 Disputable Future 12:03
(CD/DDL 67:55) (V.F.)
(Progressive Berlin School)
Through the Planck Era opens with a huge crash of metallic synth waves. Striking and startling warning shots whose resonances and residues spread a veil of sonorities above fine sparkling keys, paving the way to strong twisted synth solos that scream in a powerful electronic setting. After this shattering intro, Through the Planck Era floats between two rhythmic zones with sequences of multi-directional jumping balls. They sculpt a sawtooth cadence that undulates under the fine glass tinkles of synth shards and heavy layers of hazy mellotron. Inside its 8 minutes, Through the Planck Era reveals the musical duality that reigns through the 6 tracks composing COSMOLIGAL TALES, Przemysław Rudź's second album on the Generator.pl label. If the musician had seduced and won the attraction of new fans with Summa Technologiae, this new CD might disappoint them because the musical approach found here is different and transcends the comfort zones of a music with a thousand possibilities.
The God Particle's Dance is the kind of track that instinctively catches the ear. A good track that has all the elements to please and that starts with a mellotron waltz whose misty layers float lasciviously with a soft synth whistling its melancholic air in the background. This soft dreamy intro is disrupted by a sequencer line with chords that bounce among good percussive hits. The drive is spasmodic even though the cadence is silkily wrapped in this mellotron haze. Synth solos break free and twist around the sequences jumping in pairs with clear arpeggios, creating a beautiful rhythmic melody that in turn is smothered by the mellotron. Let There be Light presents the first atmospheric moments of this album. Almost indecisive phases with unusual sounds are clashing in a Cosmos perfumed with dark ululations and windy pulsations. It's a curious psychedelic-electronic universe that slowly takes a more musical form when latent synth waves envelop this introduction to make it waltz in a cosmic oblivion from where emerges a delicate sequenced movement and its double jumping chords. These jumping balls waddle in a zigzagging movement that is tracked by synth reverbs and curls, before entering in an ephemeral tranquility jostled by heavy layers of a synth with sharp orchestrations. Let There be Light then adopts a rhythmic structure that jumps like a street gang gait in an environment punctuated by arpeggios that chime among numerous synth solos.
Islands of the Universe is an intense cosmic ballet that will end like it began. A long and more atmospheric track which presents us another facet of P. Rudź. The intro plunges us into a musical setting submerged in strange breaths and reverberations of a cosmic tribal universe. Rumbles of galactic thunder and spinning streaks accompany this amalgam of tribal elements, reflecting Jean-Michel Jarre's universe of magmatic fusion in Magnetic Fields. This atmospheric intro gives way to a more melodic portion where synth pads fall and waltz like crazy snowflakes, reminiscent of the fabulous Snowflakes are Dancing from Tomita. The synth pads dance with the tender notes of a solitary pianist before melting into a vast breath that covers the middle of Islands of the Universe of a dark abyssal cloak. A cold metallic sequence à la Edgar Froese's Stuntman emerges. It undulates and pulses under a rain of cosmic streaks, embracing the analog and oneiric universe of Frederic Mercier in Songs from France, while another ephemeral sequence joins it to pianot down short fast flows, molding an intense static rhythm before the track falls back into the tribal and morphic approach of its intro. Still in ambient and melodic mode, We Live Here presents us with a superb nostalgic ode with its piano spreading its solicitude under a driving rain and the thunders that serve as its companion. Very beautiful and sensitive, this is the kind of music to melt the ice around lost souls. Disputable Future closes this 2nd album of the Poland synthesist with a more rock approach where the nervous and feverish sequences are joined by unbridled percussions, while the synth with tempestuous undulations and twisted solos is supported by a heavy rock guitar of Jarek Figura. A heavy and powerful track that probably seeks to rally the slightly disoriented fans who had discovered a more rhythmic and melodic P. Rudz on Summa Technologiae.
Although very different from this album, I liked the musical adventure of COSMOLIGAL TALES. I discovered a musician who, without denying his influences, leaves his comfort zone to offer an album where the still heavy rhythms mix very well with atmospheres as stormy as dreamy. It's an album well divided between rhythms and ambient phases with all the power and softness that animates the two paradoxes that cohabit very well on this 2nd effort of Przemysław Rudź.
Sylvain Lupari (January 30th, 2011) ***½**
Available at Generator pl