“Don Tyler fills our ears in this album which is more ambient than sequenced where each title arouses curiosity for another listening”
1 Icarus Station 6:42
2 NullSec 5:45
3 Sector Ash 8:02
4 Deneb IV 2:51
5 Deneb III 4:17
6 Machine Rain 7:22
7 Horizons 6:52
8 Auracom 11:28
(DDL 53:21) (V.F.)
(Space Music, Ambient beats)
Presented in a sleeve that reflects quite well the spirit of its title, MACHINE ARCOLOGY is the new album from Remote Vision. The Californian musician offers nearly 54 minutes of new EM spread over 8 tracks designed in the interstices of Utility. Another gadget created by Don Tyler to work with the Ableton Live software. I will not go into the technicalities; I just know that it greatly improves the possibilities of the Ableton. And what is the impact on the music of MACHINE ARCOLOGY?
Faithful to his vision of structured openness in atmospheric elements, here they are layers that intersect and copulate while drifting, Don Tyler draws our attention to the depth of these layers and their slow migration which is being stopped around the second minute. The blow is hard! The chord that just fell crumbles its radiations into multiple jumping keys that clump together towards a line too narrow to hold a coherent road. A pulsation will stand out and pound in a stubborn way a lively and monochord linear rhythm where two chords will stick together, thus changing the face of Icarus Station. In this minimalist melodic vision, the stationary rhythm becomes a docking station for various sources of sounds. Notably other sequences, including those fluttering vigorously, causing this rhythmic core to drift which continuously inflates with these rhythmic charges up until a possible explosion. These are drifting synth lines that open NullSec, a track undoubtedly inspired by the psybient vibes of Carbon Based Lifeforms. Two strokes of bass sequences and quavering vocal effects graft themselves like keyboard chords with a harmonic dimension. The whole thing makes an ambient rhythm with a fascinating melody which doesn't want to bloom. Tension without explosion! Sector Ash offers a very cosmic avenue with reverberating pulsations whose intersidereal winds make sound loops roll over for nearly 3 minutes. It is then that the sequencer opens the machine and releases a cloud of jumping keys. They jump everywhere, even as some find a way to get dribbled in this two-tier structure; that is to say the pleasure of reverberations in artisanal loops and these elements of rhythms without vision returning little by little to home not even 2 minutes later. Sector Ash then follows a static current with its reverberating effects in a finale, all the same quite long, which makes us hear again the mechanical pulsations of its opening.
Following its air of going, this long title drifts into the astral serenity of Deneb IV. A good title without stories where the loops have become prismatic elements. We stay in these spheres of ambient cosmic music with Deneb III. Long filaments in garish colors draw arabesques between the effects of the pulsations' resonances coming from the fall of heavy chords. A stereo effect makes the sounds travel in pulsating stages in order to build a static title but heavy and alive with its reverberating effects. The first minutes of Machine Rain belong to the vision of the title. The rhythm starts to jump and hobble a little after the 4 minutes mark to finally find a coherence by frolicking over electronic plains and under the continuous twinkling of the stars. Horizons throws a few chords in the Cosmos and without waiting a line of sequences get formed to gesticulate awkwardly, like an emerging new rhythm, in these pools filled with multi-colored balls used to amuse children while throwing balls without minimalist design. It's a little the fruit of this openness where nothing is welded in harmony before more rebellious bass-sequences are forming a slender rhythm sculpted in continual spasmodic kicks. Isolated arpeggios ensure a melodic vision just as muddled as the birth and finale of Horizons. Auracom concludes this new Remote Vision album with a nice ambient structure where the loops multiply in a choreography and where each shadow dances with the neighboring reflection, like a slow-tempo where everything is so fragile that the contact no longer exists.
MACHINE ARCOLOGY thus offers 8 titles that develop from within in order to maximize its degree of creativity as much as possible. The way in which the loops are created and the rhythmic implosions which oversize the cores, at this level Icarus Station is quite simply divine, are phenomena in themselves and arouse the curiosity about the development of the structures. But beyond the concept, there is the music! And Remote Vision fills our ears to the rim with this album which is more ambient than sequenced and of which each title arouses curiosity for another listening. And so on...
Sylvain Lupari (March 5th, 2021) ****¼*
Available at Remote Vision Bandcamp