“Here's a powerful album difficult to tame but swarming of rhythms in constant movements with a view over Berlin School and Psybiences”
1 Standing on the Shoulders of Giants 5:26
2 Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep 15:59
3 Reminiscences From Beyond Infinity 24:04
a) Atavistic Throwback
b) Playing Dice with God
c) Immersed In a Marsch of Grey Matter
d) Another Dawn of Man
4 Lonely Spirits over the Post-Megalopolis Badland 16:58
5 Interrupted Stream of
Consciousness 10:46
(CD/DDL 73:11) (V.F.)
(Psychedelic cosmic rock)ck)
Sleep is a fascinating universe. It's a world that belongs to us but whose destinies we don't control. We slide quietly towards semi-comatose phases where the beauties cross the horrors and the quietude feeds torments. It's inspired by this universe without borders that Przemyslaw Rudz dipped the tips of his fingers in order to forge the beginnings of UNEXPLORED SECRETS OF REM SLEEP. Those who are familiar with the works of the talented Polish musician know a little what to expect from this brilliant composer and sculptor of cosmic oasis. But what would be the result of a collaboration with Wladyslaw Komendarek? Keyboardist of the psychedelic prog-rock band Exodus and pioneer of the electronic scene in Poland since 1985, here is a character as disproportionate as original who multiplies all kinds of experiences within his musical evolution. Knowing already that Przemyslaw Rudz's albums are rich in related sounds, what would Komendarek's contribution bring? Built on the basis of distance, UNEXPLORED SECRETS OF REM SLEEP is a brilliant album that needs to be tame which is teeming of bipolar rhythms depicting with fascination the different phases of sleep. Phases set to music with a superb staging, conceived by Rudz, and sumptuous cerebral decorations, imagined by Komendarek.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants opens the doors of weightlessness with a soft morphic melody trapped in a vacillating movement whose contractions slip in a universe of eclectic and electronic tones. Piano chords emerge from this cerebral nothingness, strumming a linear rhythm which is surrounded by streaks and solos of a synth which swaps its delicacy for the gravity and the bites of a howling guitar. The first steps towards the unexplored secrets of dreams continue with the title track and its long intro populated with a collage of samples as heterogeneous as dreams can weave mismatched landscapes. A galloping movement of the sequencer pierces this veil of indefinite sounds, awakening a tasty wave that waddles innocently. After more than 6 minutes of ghostly blows or indefinite trots, discordant beats and gasps, church bells, spectral waves and electric winds Unexplored Secrets of REM Sleep comes out of its sleepy torpor with a muffled rhythm that amplifies its progression by good keyboard impulses and flying synth strata which caress a wild rhythmic ride nourished by the fire of good percussions and the bubbling psychotronic chords of keyboard. Reminiscences From Beyond Infinity is the heart of the torments of sleep. It's a long 24-minute epic title that is divided into 4 parts. Divided between its ambient, meditative, rhythmic and wild phases, the music begins in the tears of the solitary violin of Dominik Chmurski. He lulls the morphic choruses of its intro (Atavistic Throwback) with nice, tearful complaints. Layers crying in a world of apocalyptic metal. The tone is gloomy, and we are absorbed by a world of coldness with horrible cymbal strokes which crease the hearing and a bass drum which rolls to make the moon howling as we slowly slide towards Playing Dice with God. This second part of Reminiscences From Beyond Infinity is steeped in Tangerine Dream electronic rock rhythms from the 220 Volt era, guitars less, but the impression of hearing riffs remains vague. The percussions are wild and unbridled. They are supported by surging sequences whose intertwined exchanges are lost in the drums while the synth solos are powerful and cover this unleashed rhythm with a strange envelope of free jazz. This rhythm dissolves around the 11th minute, embracing a more lunar phase. It's a good moment of meditative poetry where the synth whistles a delicate lullaby on the back of fine waves with frail undulations. An isolated sequence makes flutter its rhythmic wings, like a rhythmic threat, awakening a vocoder which mumbles the psalms of a schizophrenic lost on the crown of a sacred mountain contemplating a world in the making. It's in this long delirium filled of quirky tones that the last phase of Reminiscences From Beyond Infinity gets under way. We hear tom-toms resound and bite the confused atmospheres. Carillon chords cut the debate between the abstract and the concrete, reviving these synths with reminiscences of Tangerine Dream, and again initiating a curt and nervous rhythm. A circular rhythm camped on unbridled percussions and sequences which try to follow the tempo while synth solos are watering copiously the rhythmic delirium with superb daring musical figures.
After this stormy foray into bipolar rhythms, Lonely Spirits over the Post-Megalopolis Badland offers a long introduction to serenity. The atmosphere is very cosmic with ambient synth layers which float lazily among choirs which breathe the morphic tranquility between star dust and chords of a discreet guitar played by Jarek Figura. The rhythm bubbles slightly a little after the 8th minute. Gyratory, it arches on a fusion of pulsations and guitar riffs, serving as ramparts to sumptuous synth solos which are supported by clouds of absent voices. This rhythm fades, losing itself in guitar chords a little indecisive and, in the end, spasmodic which try to revive a rhythmic phase hide in the vapors of Neuronium's ethers. Interrupted Stream of Consciousness ends the fascinating dissertation of the universe of pre-sleep and its spooky meanders with fine palpitations which pierce an indefinable hubbub and its variegated tones. Like everywhere in UNEXPLORED SECRETS OF REM SLEEP, the progressive rhythm is camouflaged in a sound fauna with a thousand mind-blowing bursts. The rhythm is progressive, and the bass of Maciek Warda molds a groovy tempo which rolls under the plaintive specters of the strata from an organ with the old tones from the Exodus years. And Interrupted Stream of Consciousness explodes in a cosmic psychedelic prog-rock rhythm with a funky bass, a speaking keyboard, hybrid synth layers and a guitar with furious loops which harmonize their priorities on good percussions, converging towards an evolutionary tempo that will break abruptly on the reefs of incomprehensibility, silent witness of the originality and anarchy of the harmonious fluids which separate UNEXPLORED SECRETS OF REM SLEEP from the dream and its complexities in the evolutionary stage from the sleeps disturbed by a provocative album.
You guessed that we have an album here that is not for everyone. It's a powerful one which is teeming of bipolar rhythms where the excessive imagination of Wladyslaw Komendarek finds its apotheosis in an impressive canvas of sound effects. The music is beautiful. Confusing, it's divided by evolutionary directions that fit well with the conception that one can have of the evolutionary phases of sleep. In short, UNEXPLORED SECRETS OF REM SLEEP marvelously carries the audacity of its title and of its project. It's an album that can be tasted from the tip of your ears and once you have both ears right in it, you won't get enough of it!
Sylvain Lupari (February 22, 2012) *****
Available on Generator PL