“You like the tones of the 70's? Impregnated by the years of Phaedra and Stratosfear, BauRauM is the answer to your musical greed”
1 Unten Freien Himmel 18:34 2 Er Ist Immer So Kosmisch 20:14 3 SpaceRunner 5:55 REWO Music
(DDL 44:43) (V.F.) (Analog cosmic rock)
You have enough of these artists who move the ashes of the past? Of those who throw in the sound spheres some works with the unchanging perfumes of the vintage years? For you, this past is dried up since the 70's have changed for a more metallic sound of the 80's? BauRauM could very well change your mind! And for those who eat of these tones, René van der Wouden proposes you here an opus which has all the reasons for justifying your greed. Written and recorded on the basis of the improvisation and imagined by the inspirations of the 70's, BauRauM landed between our ears with all the warmth of the analog years. The basic idea of the Dutch synthesist was to recreate the essences of the vintage EM by getting in his studio and by modulating the tones of the former days while ignoring the bases of MIDI and of samplings, creating the perfect illusion of the years when the cosmic rock was in full boiling.
Like an architect, René van der Wouden puts all his sounds and his tones in order to structure an introduction build on the model of improvisation of the 70's. So electronic sounds which twinkle in the oblivion, static cracklings which irradiate wide walls of metallic mist and long whoosh which float like clouds of ether; the introduction of Unten Freien Himmel is painted of all these elements which become allied to structure some brief rush of wavy rhythms as the sharp tumbles of centipedes on drugs trying to go down a wall of acrylic stucco. In fact, the first 8 minutes of Unten Freien Himmel are forged in these mysterious cosmic atmospheres where our ears ran of madness in front of the imagination of the creators of this time. Except that we are in 2016! And nevertheless, the charm still operates because of the modulation of a structure which grows rich constantly in front of our perplexed ears. When they are not the sounds, it's the short phases of rhythms that question our suspicion. The rhythm pierces finally the mysteries of the metallic drizzle a little after the point of 8 minutes. René van der Wouden brings us then in the period of Phaedra and Stratosfear with a superb movement of sequences which rolls like a crazy train through the so many psychotronic clouds of the vintage years. The analogy with the works of Baumann, Franke and Froese cannot be avoided with this structure of rhythm which moves up and moves down through a sound painting which imitates marvelously the genius of masters of the time. That's very good! The illusion is perfect and it's more than just a simple imitation just because of this cosmic touch which is rather unique to the repertoire of René van der Wouden. Er Ist Immer So Kosmisch is built around the same principle, although here the introduction mislays its first 11 minutes in a more cosmic, a more psychedelic, approach with a thick cloud of weird tones which wave in the acidity of the iodized winds. A pattern of rhythm, tied by circular loops, makes climb a hoop of docile keys in a minimalist approach decorated by tears of synth. A synth in its clothes of violin which caresses the indefatigable walking of a rhythm which sometimes surprises us by a tone and by a slight change in its rotation. This rotary motion breaks itself slightly a little after the bar of the 15 minutes, offering a more pulsatory and a more ambient rhythm with variations in the movement and of which tints try to harmonize with a clearly more psychedelic and more ethereal approach of a synth and of its armada of electronic tones worthy of vintage years. This is cosmic rock with a very ambiospherical flavor. The same goes for SpaceRunner which is very near the ambient cosmic movement of Vangelis.
BauRauM is an ode to the 70's. These years when the music went out of its zone of comfort with instruments which would change forever the way to create rhythms, harmonies and ambiences. A beautiful album for those who missed this era. A beautiful album to dip us back there.
Sylvain Lupari (January 30th, 2016) ***½**
Available at René van der Wouden Bandcamp