“Sasa Tosic amazes here by the way he builds his compositions which sounds like David Wright at his peak”
1 Modern Ballet 3:43 2 Twentyone Seconds 4:48 3 Infinity Part 1 4:14 4 When this Moment Became True 1:49 5 Circles of Time 5:06 6 Seawalk 5:46 7 Tenthousand Planets 6:27 8 Closer to You 4:22 9 Breakout 1:53 10 Forever Present 5:22 11 Infinity Part 2 5:24 12 Reflecting 3:56 13 Cycles of Life 4:00 Stefan Erbe Music SPOTIFY
(CD/DDL 56:49) (V.F.) (Symphonic Electronic Rock)
The proof that any album deserves a 2nd, even a 3rd chance? The 1st time that I listened to CIRCLES OF TIME from the brand newcomer from the Erbe Music label, Sasa Tosic, I was a little surprised by a very film music, the kind that gives you a plentiful of tears in a poignant finale with violins waltzing in heavens, which takes with an electronic rock tangent close to the style of Jerome Froese, with a guitar and percussions which make riffs and jolts, in a second part more in rhythm and noisier of Modern Ballet. My ears were annoyed by this bend between the sweetness of the dreamy piano and the fury of a not completely accomplished rock, for lack of time. The 2nd time, my ears go up until Twentyone Seconds without wanting again to go farther. And bang! By a gloomy Sunday morning of the beginning of September, I was reading my newspaper and I said to myself: why not? It's there that I succumbed to this very good production of the Erbe Music studio. Let's say that the very romantic Infinity Part 1 helped a lot. And I discovered an album which rich in melodies, in slow rhythms and in arrangements where the cinematographic side goes in transit more pleasantly towards some very sentimental e-rock.
A piano of mist opens the delicate circular melody of Modern Ballet. The movement is mild and poignant with sighs of violin and arrangements to make a wall cry. We float on the harmonies of the violin and we swirl frivolously on the harmonious carousel of the piano. We are not even reach the 2 minutes' spot that a guitar scribbles this soft illusion of romanticism with heavy riffs which espouse the sighs of orchestrations and point out soloes which go crawling like a threatening shadow. With a pattern which will be familiar to us for the next 50 minutes, Modern Ballet goes astray towards a jerky rock where the guitar makes duel with abrupt and convulsive orchestrations. Twentyone Seconds approaches our ears with a ghost melody of an oriental savor which sheds tears with an effect of Chinese violin. Pulsations resound in the background, disturbing these esoteric vibes where voices and harmonies are sculpted in symbiosis. The music approaches a slightly more accentuated phase with a structure of rhythm which gallops slowly in a thick coat of orchestrations. Still here, these orchestrations are of silk and are weaved with the aim of raising our hairs from our arms. And if you like the genre, it abounds and fed the numerous heart-rending moments of CIRCLES OF TIME. We stay in a more ethereal tenderness with Infinity Part 1. This time it's notes of guitar that sigh a very melancholic approach on a bed of clanic percussions. The effects of tenderness are so striking that we just don’t know where to give ear in this music knotted of intrigues of harmonies and of tearful violins on a slow, but delicately lively, rhythm. That works very well with the greyness which paint my windows. The guitar, also an object of omnipresence on this first album of Sasa Tosic, scatters very convincing solos which sound like a good old Mike Oldfield, or yet Brett Snyder. I'm going from surprise to surprise with a title like When this Moment Became True and its uncertain approach which looks for the comfort of the symphonic floating style. The title-track turns into melodrama with slow staccato movements which tear up the dense harmonies of the violins. The structure and the arrangements are very intense and especially impenetrable for this structure of rhythm of which the introvert gallop remains flooded in the jolts of the orchestrations. There is this fine melody perched on a vampiric carousel, Halloween style, which doesn't stop to haunt my ears. And the guitar which gets in! In brief, Circles of Time waltzes in an approach of movie where the e-rock always remains enclosed by an orchestra of 10 violins and cellos. It's very, but very, intense and I liked it quite easily. Seawalk is a beautiful ballad on a heavy and slow rhythm where the guitar and the keyboard harmonize their different. The same goes for Tenthousand Planets which is more symphonic on the other hand with a very good final transported by a gust of a slow and jerky beat and where the piano is always losing these bites of melodies. Between a rock heavy and slow and waltzes of violins, Closer to You goes down pretty well. Although the kind begins to be more predictable. After the rebel rhythm which embraces a little the kind of Jazz and Lounge of the too short Breakout, Forever Present proposes a nice layer of harmonies on a ballad propelled by sentimental violins. It's a good slow dance with a good guitar which puts me in the moods of the movie Top Gun and of its track Anthem, without the wild rock side. Infinity Part 2 proposes a structure in movement where the aspects of rock, of ballad and of ambient go in transit on heavy arrangements. After the soft and very light ballad of Reflecting, Cycles of Life sells the last minutes of CIRCLES OF TIME with a music which grows in velocity without ever exceeding these borders that Sasa Tosic keeps jealously into an approach of symphonic ballad.
For a first album, Sasa Tosic amazes by the way he builds his compositions which sounds like David Wright in his peak. CIRCLES OF TIME is an album of electronic symphonic rock rather easy to assimilate, because his author plays constantly with the strings of our feelings with arrangements to make the walls cry. And the production is top notch! At the end, I liked these duels between a sometimes aggressive guitar and a dreamy piano which scatters twigs of harmonies in a dense tapestry of orchestrations. The soft and the hard are confronting each other, adding portions of lively rock and melodies of silk. My tender wife Lise has liked it a lot… that says everything!
Sylvain Lupari (September 5th, 2017) ***½** SynthSequences.com
Available at Stefan Erbe Music