“Live in Cologne (The Dominikaner Session) is a good live album and a good way to be introduce to the lunar moods and beats of Realtime”
1 Deep Inside13:58
2 Move on into Space10:54
3 Lunar Habitat5:55
4 Voyage to Virgo9:43
5 Up up to the Sky5:53
6 Equinocticum13:00
7 Jam de Electronique8:39
(CD-r 68:02) (V.F.)
(Ambient and cosmic e-rock)
The beauty of the Internet and its various download platforms is this link of friendship that exists from now on between an artist and his audience. Let's take the example of Realtime which since its second breath with the Solar Walk album is rereleasing its first two albums while making available some live recordings. Following this new craze from their Berlin fans, the duet gave a concert in April 2014 at the Cologne Cathedral. A well welcomed concert where Realtime performed old tracks from the first 2 albums. Thomas Bock and Norbert Hensellek have performed nearly 40 minutes of music. In front of the very positive reaction of the public and the requests of fans, Realtime has put on-line, via the SynGate platform, this concert soberly entitled LIVE IN COLOGNE (The Dominikaner Session).
Basically, the new music proposed is the equivalent of what we find in Solar Walk. Either be with ambient rhythms, set apart for the very energetic Up up to the Sky and of its spacey Jean-Michel Jarre structure, which try to emerge from dense ambient-cosmic veils. And it's in this environment that Deep Inside extricates itself from loudspeakers. Noises of interstellar machineries and rather black breaths of Orion suppress a minimalist lunar rhythm of which the flow of a normal march, and a little more accelerated one, merge into an evasive rhythmic structure a bit jerky. This slow stroboscopic thin line spreads its sequences which hiccup quite slowly before dissolving into an ambient passage full of interstellar noises. A line of bass remains snuggled up well at the bottom, pounding randomly in search of a rising rhythm. A rhythm which reappears a little after the mark of 8 minutes with keys of bass sequence which beat delicately under the aegis of a concert of cosmic voices which hum in good orchestral arrangements. This is good ambient cosmic rock which reminds unmistakably the vintages years, especially with the electronic arrangements which breathe the Picture Music years from Klaus Schulze. Arrangements that we recognize easily on the following 4 tracks with interpretations which pushes us a little bit more in the lunar moods of Realtime. Equinocticum is the second unreleased track and its intro is scented of Software's orchestral arrangements with veils of synth which float and turn in discreet solos tinted of melancholy and of dark voices of which the secret chants throw a wave of mysticism to this intro which exceeds the 6 minutes. Come then some delicate keys which skip in the ashes of voices and of the envelope of violins with rather timid jumps and whose symmetry forges a delicious rhythm as much minimalist than morphic. It's with a rhythm a little more solid, a little more jerky that Jam de Electronique ends LIVE IN COLOGNE (The Dominikaner Session). If the rhythm possesses all the ingredients to offer a solid e-rock, it remains on the other hand rather passive by struggling in a cosmic broth multicolored by streaks which scroll like oversize stars. A brief ambient passage, fed by voices of cosmonauts, separates the track which grows heavy with pulsations of a technoïd kind which get Jam de Electronique heavier and more alive, without never reaching the summits of Up up to the Sky, and which concludes a good album which can easily serve as front door in the universe of Realtime.
Sylvain Lupari (August 20th, 2014) ***½**
Available at SynGate Bandcamp