“This is a perfect friend to relax or to visualize the wild beauty of New Zealand or to simply sleep with music within earshot”
1 Stars Appear 6:41
2 As Dusk Becomes Night 6:27
3 Conifer Grove 2:04
4 Starlane 5:31
5 Moa Caves 4:20
6 The Crepuscular Wildlife 5:16
7 Moonlit Beach (for Jeff) 5:14
8 Lakeside Shelter 5:21
9 Western Wind 5:34
10 Night Becomes Dawn 3:45
11 Sunny Day 7:53
(CD/DDL 58:12) (V.F.)
(Ambient Music)
Rudy Adrian, on Spotted Peccary, is an artist committed to defending the tonal colors of his New Zealand. The winds down under don't have the same colors, nor the same effects. They are fluty and their breezes are full of Tibetan tinkling. The fauna rests mainly around the songs of birds, the pecking of woodpeckers hitting the wood to split their heads and the bewitching movements of percussive bells of giant rattlesnakes. The New Zealand artist has this tiny honor to make a clear distinction between his ambient works and those driven by the sequencer-based style of the Berlin School that we find on Groove. Unlike Woodlands, AS DUSK BECOMES NIGHT offers 11 original tracks without the shadow of a rhythm, except for the dark Western Wind. This new album is essentially based on layers of winds with aromas of serenity lying down with the help of the Yamaha SY77 and its complement in the Yamaha Montage 6. Thus, giving this consistency in the sounds and ambiences constantly sailing in serenity.
It's with a chant of wood and a swarm of parasitic noises driven by heavy winds that Stars Appear installs its tranquility with a musical envelope pushed by an action of Aeolus. A nice fluty chant emerges. Its melody is poignant as its harmony climbs to reach ever higher peaks. This prismatic air extends like a synth layer weakened by its emotional peaks always pushed higher. Tingles adorn these ambiences with a good effect of a nocturnal piano crumbling above a tail movement of a giant rattlesnake in a universe with a Vangelis ascendant. These Stars Appear's elements will be on the menu for the next 10 tracks from Rudy Adrian's new album. Starting with the title-track and its cloud of waves which extend such a peaceful musical panorama. This immense static layer radiates a deaf humming in which secret voices are hidden. It's like hearing the wind whistling over a huge frozen lake. Conifer Grove is a short title animated by the breaths of a flute that make these coniferous cones tremble while animating a secret horde of chimes whose awakening stirs the dramatic side of a more reverberating layer. The strong winds of Star Lane propel us into a dark environment. Hollow winds are dominant and the ringing of bells, as well as the shamanic ones, bring a chthonic ambience to the album. The rain singing coming from the water droplets heralding Moa Caves is a delicious little find. The dark keyboard chords bring an ambient rhythmic progression where the impression of going in circles brings to our ears a sound fauna, equivalent to the colors of an underwater polar aurora, well detailed.
Other forms of ringing, less acrimonious, awaken the first radiations of The Crepuscular Wildlife, a title shaped in the remains of Stars Appear. A nice fluty air sings among the many radiations of the Yamaha which also extracts a nice slew of sound effects from its interstices. A good title which reconnects me with Rudy's musical values. It's in the spells of this giant rattlesnake tail, or even a bird song unknown to my ears, that the layers of Moonlit Beach (for Jeff) move forward with an endlessly perpetuating wave multiplication effect. They serve as a bed for this synth song, so rare in this album, and in connection with the nature of AS DUSK BECOMES NIGHT. A percussive chord sculpts a spiral procession which turns in the opposite direction of the layers, showing another possibility of charm in this distancing of two poles. Lakeside Shelter embraces this tranquility, this poetry under the full moon that dresses most of the music on this album. The ambiences are secret, keeping an open door on the dark ambient side from which a little mist, as well as prismatic airs, escape. Western Wind is the only title to offer beats. They are scattered over a very dark structure whose black winds bring to our ears these dusts of semi-decomposed specters, we can even hear them a little, in a universe as dark as that of the Exorcist. Night Becomes Dawn brings back some of these ambiences, while Sunny Day reflects the philosophy of its title with the gentle impulses propelling layers filled with solar energy in a vision of atmospheric music without the shadow of a rhythm.
An album of pure ambient music, AS DUSK BECOMES NIGHT is the perfect companion to relax or to visualize the wild beauty of New Zealand whose videos are flocking all over the Internet. We can try to sleep on it, even if its core breathes of the dark side of EM with deaf impulses giving more life to its tenebrous aspect. But Rudy Adrian's predominantly optimistic vision returns to express to us in music the splendours of this corner of the planet where nothing is like elsewhere!
Sylvain Lupari (April 1st, 2021) ***¾**
Available at Spotted Peccary Music