“Built upon the basis of improvisation and distance, Beyond the Horizon has what it needs to please the fans of a meditative ambient music with a touch of darkness”
1 Silent Dreaming 7:00 2 View from a Sacred Hill 8:04 3 Memories of Sundays 7:54 4 Rotating Spirals 7:59 5 Beyond the Horizon 7:07 6 Thoughts Before Sunrise 7:30 7 En Trance 4:27 8 Abyss 8:24 Romerium Music
(DDL 58:28) (VF) (Ambient & Meditative EM)
The echo of the first chords of Silent Dreaming are reflected on delicate waves which throw themselves on the sand. An electric piano and a violin! These two instruments at the diapasons of their tones sculpt here a melancholic ambient ode where the electronic and the acoustic are able of moving well a sensitive soul's string. The keyboard keys are ringing with a harmony blurred by the multiplication of the echo, bringing this first title of the Romerium/Martin Neuhold association towards a meditative dew weaved in the linear movement of a mass of scarlet lines. Meditative and ambient, BEYOND THE HORIZON was thought and built at distance while Martin Neuhold meditated on musical improvisations that Rene “Romerium” Montfoort dressed in even more meditative synth layers of a color sky blue, giving to the compositions of Martin Neuhold a more aerial touch. Set apart Spiral Rotating and maybe En Trance, there is no excitement in this album and everything is quiet in the universe of this duet which aimed at a real album of meditative music. To this level, they reached their goal with success even if we are far enough from the beautiful Nebula Sequences from Romerium released in 2016.
A harp guides the contemplative corridors of View from a Sacred Hill, a nice title I have to admit where the tremor of the keyboard forges a fascinating complicity with these strings which resound with tenderness. An effect of cello and its angelic salvoes adds to the adorable sweetness of this jewel which is made to bring us near a restful nap. Memories of Sundays follows with the same approach, maybe slightly more ethereal, where a delicate keyboard lays downs its melancholy in the placidity of the multi-lines of a synth of which the plaintive tone erodes its color. We loosen our knees with the beat all in loops of Rotating Spirals. It's the guitar which throws these loops, structuring an ambient minimalist approach from where escape some chords and their nuances in this hypnotic movement. Veils of synth in colors always so near blue steel cover these loops which meet the percussions around the 3rd minute. Rotating Spirals becomes then a good electronic rock available for a series of solos of which the tones vary between those of an electric six-strings and of a synth. After this rhythm easy to catch and to like, the title-track proposes an opening filled with communicative noises that we associate with an extraterrestrial contact. The tone is so given to a cosmic and meditative ambient music with fragile arpeggios which hesitate to lay a harmonious structure. That sounds quite like Neuronium!
Thoughts Before Sunrise leans a little on the same principle with communicative beeps. In the end, that remains another very meditative title with riffs and chords of keyboard and\or guitar which float in layers of mist and of orchestrations to the sibylline ambient songs. Chords which fall in a tonal pond are spreading reflective waves and the percussions, kind of Tabla, structure the delicate rhythm of En Trance. The rhythm takes place between the ears with other percussions which add weight and drum a parallel rhythm which always remains passive. The effect does a little bit Chill Out or still tribal ambient. Abyss reflects the colors of its title with a hollow ambient music. Black and tenebrous breezes are weaving an impenetrable panorama where knockings and diverse effects of voices stream in the mooing of a wall of lamentations and of effects which attracts us continuously towards the bottom. This title of dark ambiences adds to the versatility of the orientations of BEYOND THE HORIZON, a nice album without more to which one listens rather well and which risks to please the fans of the meditative ambient kind with a touch of dark.
Sylvain Lupari (May 8th, 2018) ***** SynthSequences.com Available at Romerium Bandcamp