“I would be tell that Blue Dream is a track forgotten by Klaus Schulze in his studios between Body Love and Mirage that I would believe it”
1 Fly Over Me 33:23 Sequentia Legenda Music
(DDL 33:23) (V.F.) (Berlin School)
It's a friend who tipped me off. His message was clear; I had to listen to this music of Sequentia Legenda. A group and/or an artist that I didn't know, neither from Adam nor Eve. I thus clicked on the link he sent me so to hear the first minutes of Fly Over Me. Dusts of cosmos, absent voices and synth pads to fine modulations have soon awake my curiosity. And I contacted the artist. Sequentia Legenda is a French artist who discovered EM of the Berlin School kind at the beginning of the 80's. It's an old album of Klaus Schulze which was lying in the music collection of his parents that has pricked his curiosity and made of him a bulimic of the art. As will prove the multiple albums that he will buy and his desire to learn as much as possible about the instruments which created these fuzzy rhythms and these esoteric ambiences. Years passed by. His collection grew bigger, but the information on synthesizers sounded to be of pure legends, hearsay, gossip. That is years later, and purely by chance, that he will finally find THE instrument. It happened in the back shop of musical store that Laurent was going to find the most symbolic of EM instruments; the famous Minimoog! Over the years, he amassed an impressive collection of synthesizers and it's only recently that he decided to plunge and to compose a music which aims to be a tribute to his biggest influence; Klaus Schulze.
The first sequence of rhythm emerges a little after the 2nd minute. We are in full Body Love period with this movement of sequences which goes and comes, like a timeless loop, under the hot caresses of a synth to the melancholic veils. The movement is minimalist and its evolution goes by quite smoothly. The sighs of synths are soothing and divert our listening towards some paradisiacal heavens. That will be only in a subsequent listening that we shall notice that the rhythm has changed, has increased its pace a little bit. It's more fluid. A bit jerky, but always so dreamlike. And the more it goes and the more this ambient rhythm shows a peaceful swiftness. At this point, the synth pads magnetize the most our attention. There is a perfect balance in tones and in emotionalism. If the rhythm stirs constantly, the ambiences are always breathing of serenity. The astral waves roll in cosmos, while that fine and somber modulations make contrasts with a structure of rhythm which makes now the percussions pounding delicately. And things are changing. If the velocity gains the rhythm, the ambiences are getting more poetic. We hear these choirs so absent, which haunt the great majority of the celestial moods of the Berlin School, roaming now on a rivulet of sequences which glitter of its thousand reflections. Honestly? I'm under the charm! Someone tells me that Fly Over Me is a track forgotten by Klaus Schulze in his studios between Body Love and Mirage that I would believe it. Everything is there. The minimalist approach and this art that Schulze has to stretch a piece without that seems long. Sequentia Legenda waters constantly his repetitive structure of pads, astral voices and electronic elements which bicker the ambiences over of a structure of rhythm filtered of many hypocritical modulations. We got back on our feet and ppfft! All has changed. But when? And it's all the charm of FLY OVER ME which goes through its 10 stages without that we never see nothing coming. This is hypnosis at big knocks of charm. Even when the movement becomes a bit stroboscopic. Even when the rhythm makes oscillate its sequenced keys like a thousand of bottles in the sea on a sunny day tortured of great winds. The synth rays are there to calm this gregarious violence which stirs up from the inside, revealing all the charms of these ambient rhythms which make duel with seraphic ambiences. And it is like that for the 33 minutes that is lasting FLY OVER ME.
Is Sequentia Legenda a gust of wind in the sky of EM? A little as Danger in Dream was in 2001 with the stunning Entrance? That would be a pity because this is a magnificent piece of music in the realm of EM which is perfumed by the most beautiful fragrances of a music of which the charms will remain obsessing for still the coming years. I still have my ears full of dreams and of hope to hear more of Sequentia Legenda. To hear more of his music. Get our fingers crossed!
Sylvain Lupari (February 1st, 2014) ****½*
Available at Sequentia Legenda Bandcamp