“An album all in rhythms, in melodies and splendid synth solos”
1 Cosmic 2.0 4:43
2 The Sound of Freedom (2021) 6:20
3 Perseverance 11:15
4 Pulse 5:41
5 A Mysterious Dawn 7:25
6 At the Borders of Orion 18:57
7 The Ballad of Constant Evolution 5:16
(DDL 59:41) (V.F.)
(Melodious EM, Soundtrack)
I discovered an excellent melodist in Robert Kalyos when I was discovering Cosmopolis. It was in early 2021. The Italian musician had come back with a brand-new version of Cosmopolis, Cosmopolis (The Single Tracks). It was neither more nor less Cosmopolis hardly revised and corrected with titles slightly stretched and others presented in a more minimal form. This preamble to describe how Robert Kalyos seeks perfection and especially that he is not a compulsive composer. HYBRID SYSTEM OF VARIABLE SEQUENCES is perhaps a 6th album in 2021, except that it is made of tracks that have already appeared on other albums that the Verona synthesist has selected, assembled and arranged to make an album that flows beautifully from its 60 minutes. An album all in rhythms where the melodies are tied up inside the loops of splendid synth solos. The great strength of this new Robert Kalyos album.
If you think you hear some Vangelis during the first waves of sounds opening Cosmic 2.0, a track composed in 2017 and already presented on his SoundCloud page, you are not far from a certain reality. The effluvia of Blade Runner scent this opening with a climbing intensity in the synth laments. A harmonic duel between the keyboard and the screaming synth commands respect from our ears as Cosmic 2.0 goes towards a technoïd rock with thumping percussion pounding a heavy rhythm to the floor and with aluminum hands that crunch pleasantly between the ears. Throughout the track, Robert Kalyos manages to make his melody come alive between the synth beams and these percussions that are the first sonic gems of this album. An excellent and catchy track that depicts very well the matrix of HYBRID SYSTEM OF VARIABLE SEQUENCES. The Sound of Freedom (2021) doesn't waste a second and offers a structure similar to Cosmic 2.0, in a more progressive envelope. Reverb effects darken this E-Rock vision of the 70's that starts when the arpeggios are crashing down the keyboard some 80 seconds later. The music then becomes more catchy with a melodious side linked to the rhythm of percussions and the harmonies of the synth. The pace breaks around the 3:30 mark! Slower, The Sound of Freedom (2021) remains tastier with a cinematographic ambience stigmatized in its imprint. Perseverance presents us with a big 11 minutes of progressive E.M. poured into a catchy rock. The approach reminds me a lot of Synergy doing in the more accessible genre. The flow is nervous with sequences and arpeggios that flutter around our ears until a first change of skin, made in subtlety, between minutes 4 and 5. It's there that the Synergy of the album Games fills my ears of memories! The structure is always nervous and welcomes a magnificent synth solo, one of the most beautiful I heard lately, whose ritornello runs in our ears for a while. An excellent track!
Pulse gets us into the ears with a nervous rhythm that breathes the 80's synth-pop until it's got caught by an attack of killer arpeggios. A track without stories, except for the synth that throws us a solo full of harmonious knots that writes a good one. Robert Kalyos chose A Mysterious Dawn as the single of the album. And with good reason! Its flow is slow and conducive to the creation of a synth solo whose harmonious loops roll until they reach the bottom of our eardrums. At the Borders of Orion is a long progressive track that Kalyos has presented last May in an EP format segmented in 5 parts. It's proposed here without index. Its beginning is atmospheric with a slow waltz between musical layers and synth lines in a background fed by the drones of the reverberations. These lines and layers whisper suggestive jeremiads that call for rhythm some 17 seconds after the 7th minute. The sequences leap under this avalanche of cosmic lamentations that turn into a long litany filled with emotions. The 3rd transformation takes place after the 11th minute. Laborious, it rebels to become a static electronic rock, or cosmic, becoming a new accomplice for the synth to multiply its art of making percussive solos by 10. A very good track that is easily tamed! The Ballad of Constant Evolution ends this other great album of the Italian musician with a nervous rhythm, swirling with spasms where a barely audible melody hides, but not the synth solos à la Chariots of Fire that makes it even more noble.
Available only in download format, and in streaming of course, HYBRID SYSTEM OF VARIABLE SEQUENCES is another very good album from Robert Kalyos. A very good production that highlights countless solos of a synth that also likes to plant melodious seeds in very catchy rhythmic structures. In short, we spend a very good 60 minutes of EM with the perfumes of the 70's. And superb solos worthy of the art of EM.
Sylvain Lupari (August 4th, 2021) ****½*
Available at Robert Kalyos Bandcamp