“Again, another solid album of Prog Electronic Rock from the synth wizard of Poland”
1 Afraid of Dawn 6:26 2 Away from Landlubbers 8:13 3 Sharing Thoughts with Waves 9:28 4 Shipwreck Yard 8:45 5 Master of Own Fate 24:32 Generator.pl | GEN CD 044 (CD/DDL 57:24) (V.F.) (Progressive EM)
More than one year after the release of the splendid Let Them Float, Przemyslaw Rudz gets back with a new solo album which is again inspired by the sea. This time, the Polish synthesist wizard gives thanks to those who live on it while risking their life to this end; the fishermen and the sailors. With a sound aestheticism and an impeccable production, this MASTER OF OWN FATE is also carefully presented with another splendid digipack artwork from the Polish label, Generator PL. In all, we find a good 57 minutes of a music here which seems to be in a fight to be ended between the classical form of EM and the style of a more progressive one with violent rhythmic explosions here and there. And according to the signature of Przemyslaw Rudź, his music is also used as a bed for some amazing synth solos while being scrupulously coated with these orchestrations and with these effects which attract the astral marvels between our ears, just like this rather melancholic vision of a brilliant artist who deserves amply to be better known outside his lands.
Afraid of Dawn starts things up with floating arpeggios which sparkle in a Milky Way. Some of these arpeggios weave a fine melody which courts the sound elements of this star cluster. And then the emptiness and the humming of its machine! In this environment where celestial bodies glisten of one thousand colors, orchestral synth layers stretch their obituary harmonies which float like these gigantic space shuttles trying to land on the interstellar banks. Cosmic or earthly, the influences from the sound sculptor of Elblag always stay in halftones so giving the gas necessary for the imagination of the carrier of ears to make it glitter in any sphere. Except that with Away from Landlubbers, there is no doubt! We have here a good and rather energetic electronic rock. The chord's riffs spread clouds of fat, leaving the senses in suspense, whereas nervous arpeggios slide on some invisible slopes. Percussions snatch this uncertain structure with strikes as slim as clapping of hands. A whistler rambling on this feeble rock throws harmonies swallower of eardrums while some arpeggios flight slightly over a nest of percussions which is not in lack of imagination to please a timid ear. The synth solos here are very catchy. Let's underline moreover the presence of the keyboardist Krzysztof Duda, who has already collaborated with Rudź in the Tricity album in spring 2017, on this track.
Sharing Thoughts with Waves falls in the intensity and not just a little. Big and loud organ layers, kind of Phantom of the Opera, throw its introduction. This phantasmagorical intro is fast moderated by chants of whales which let themselves lull by some interstellar waves. The white, the black, the celestial bodies, the oceans and the earth are 5 dimensions in constants oppositions in the universe of Przemyslaw Rudź and which nevertheless always end to be bound together. After these chants of whales and of astral mermaids, the jingles of cymbals awaken its old buddies, the percussions and a bass line, in order to plunge Sharing Thoughts with Waves into a good Space Funk loaded of connected vibes and orchestral layers a bit melancholic. And the rhythm follows its tangent with good elements of percussions and effects of drama, on its way towards a good well enhanced velocity. Shipwreck Yard offers a more complex music and becomes little by little an excellent buffet of tones from the 4 corners of the planet for insatiable ears. The introduction is long of 5 minutes before a disorganized rhythm comes to shake a sea agitated by these elements of ambiences. The long title-track ends this album, which has a vision more rock than ethereal compared to Let Them Float, with a formula of progressive jazz-rock stimulated by some good, and rather brilliant at the level of the effects, percussions and a bed agitated of keen oscillations as furious as this keyboard starved for a big progressive rock. Plentiful with vintage tones, the synth solos are simply furious and some even awaken Keith Emerson's memories, the keyboard too by the way. After this reinvented fury, the music slides towards a festival of effects of ambiences crossed by waves of strange, sometimes inert or stormy, noises. After this long interlude of more or less 6 minutes, the percussions get to restructure quietly the ambiences of Master of Own Fate in order to inflate the last moments of an album which divides marvelously intensity and cosmic wandering towards a pattern of progressive electronic rock always haloed with effects of 1001 sound boxes of Przemyslaw Rudź. Not as ethereal as Let Them Float but fiendishly good. Very good should I add!
Sylvain Lupari (March 28th, 2018) *****
Available on Generator PL
Available at Przemyslaw Rudź Bandcamp