“[ Origin # 02 ] will screw you to your dreams with a huge musical wrap made of iridescents and disturbing layers of synths”
1 Landform (Origin 2005) 9:17
2 Mystic Science (Origin 2007) 8:42
3 Active Sky (Origin 2003) 6:55
4 Echo (Origin 2009) 7:09
5 Unknown Presence (Origin 2008) 5:50
6 Surface (Origin 2007) 6:30
7 Lifebook (Origin 2003) 8:12
8 The Missing (Origin 2006) 9:36
9 Falling Shadows (Origin 2005) 6:55
10 Asteroid / Time MachineLullaby
(Origin Unknown) 8:28
(CD/DDL 77:34) (V.F.)
(Psybient, down tempo, sci-fi EM)
Me, who has discovered the paradisiac musical universe of Solar Fields with the very beautiful Until we Meet the Sky, I have waited for this compilation of tracks living in the hidden recesses of Magnus Birgersson's studio with a great deal of impatience. The project [ Origin] is a quadrilogy of tracks forgotten in the archived memories of the Swedish electronic musician who masters to perfection the art of the minimalist movement and of its oblong evolutions as tortuous as melodious. This volume 2, I haven't heard volume 1, recuts 9 tracks which didn’t make their way towards the thin silvery disc since 2003. And it's not because none of these haven't find a room on the subsequent albums that they are negligible, on the contrary. Well settled in his studio, Birgersson weaves a stunning electronic painting over these 9 tracks which fit together into a musical universe which disregards time.
The intro of Landform floats with insouciance, sticking its vaporous synth layers on a floating pond of white noises. It's out of nothing that we do something? Talk about that to Magnus Birgersson who throws his tones in the emptiness, such as a painter blasé by his white canvas in search of any idea. And the idea comes through percussions of a clanic kind which drum a rhythm in search of its articulated skeleton. Pulsations cavort, stroll and frolic before creating a filet of homogeneous rhythm where organic suctions and noises of spectral chains are holding onto the pulsation which makes the delicate skeleton of Landform tremble. And Birgersson to draw a thin streamer of strummed sequences which encircles a mesmerizing magnetic rhythm which hides behind of fine and harmonious strata of a synth carbureting at a high level of emotionalism. And Landform ends in an unexpected heaviness, splashing an attractive organic fauna and its sequenced arpeggios which fade out in the past of this present without future. The music of Solar Fields is like an invasion of Body Snatchers. It goes into our ears to take the shapes that Magnus Birgersson wants to forge while leaving place to our own cerebral interpretation. And it's with both hemispheres in waiting that Mystic Science gets rid of its intro fed by stroboscopic hoops to dive into its linear rhythm, interrupted by a short ambient passage, flagellated of laminated hooting which tear an ambience calcified in a meshing of trampling pulsations and percussions. Activate Sky struggles in a Hindu approach. The rhythm hesitates for a long time before sinking with pulsations sunk at knocks of a metronomic hammer of which the decorative rattles ring under the hubbubs of the electronic macaws and the cybernetic voices. Echo pushes strong on our eardrums at knocks of repetitive bludgeon before kissing a superb movement articulated by heavy and resonant sequences of which the ample zigzags remind us the undulations of the Teutonic Berlin School genre. Here, as all around [ Origin # 02 ], the rhythm and the melody bring together all the data available in the old computer of Solar Fields to be decorated with the most beautiful assets that the spheroidal psybient down-tempos can scattered, with their unwavering sound whirlwinds, in all the corners of our two hemispheres which tergiversate between letting themselves go wild or swirl such as zombies on acid. I have taste to listen to some Juno Reactor! The vampiric strata which debauch Unknown Presence temper a little the mood which remains all the same rather heavy. We hear furtive and tenacious rolling on the background, obliterating a paradox between the rhythm castrated by its ardour and the synth strata which sing of a soft metallic emotion.
Crackling of starving poltergeists and the drum rolls of which the militarized approach is evaporate into ambiences fed by iridescent particles, Surface ends to be a very good upbeat track. The rhythm is superbly well cemented. The strikings of metallic percussions and the hopping bass are resounding in the lines of synths which undulate licentiously of their organic squeaks, spitting psychedelic mists and spectral voices which marinade in luxurious synth pads to impulses as much exhilarating as musical. It's one of the great tracks on [ Origin # 02 ]. Lifebook offers a disturbing intro where the circles of synth hesitate to enter into the heavy threatening pulsations. These echoing pulsations tremble with uncertainty before rolling in pulsations hammered in a slow movement of hypnotism. Little spherical bell is ringing and feed an introduction poured into the electronic organic world where everything can be... out of nothing. The circles, became eroded by the content fury of the pulsating strikings, lose their plasmatic haloes before being gobbled up by an immense musical mass fed by an overpopulation of morphic strata which cavort and swirl lasciviously in a strategic disorder, leaving a hearing imprint of a heavy rhythm hammered with strength. An oblong reverberation paves the stellar way at the very wrapping The Missing among which the knocks of percussions, as heavy as they can be, don't manage to turn out the dense veil of sensibility which shouts in a musical mood which brushes the harmonies of Tangerine Dream. The tears of synth are striking of tenderness and wrap us in a comfort of emotionalism which has an equal only these finales extremely poignant of Until We Meet the Sky and Random Friday. The rhythm begins skipping on a burning stream of twinkling sequences and chords of an e-piano which sparkle in very dark synth veils. From real and tangible, the tempo becomes organic, leading the tears of synths in a finale a bit apocalyptic. Falling Shadows is an intense down-tempo so heavy than black and whose envelope of emotionalism is as much disturbing as the one of The Missing. The slow circular rhythm becomes a sound slaughter as dark as in Faith of The Cure with synth layers to the tearful rustling and melodic lines subdivided between anguish and hope. After these two extremely intense tracks, Asteroid / Time Machine Lullaby ends with a swarm of arpeggios which swirl in a movement sparkling with spasmodic kicks. The approach is very cosmic with these synth layers filled by a very spirit of sci-fi which kiss a strange cacophonous lullaby, before following a more homogeneous structure which will know many new developments which sound at the very antipodes of what I heard so far of Solar Fields.
True that I only know the universe of Solar Fields from the tip of my ears. It's thus impossible for me to validate the artistic content of the musical rests of Magnus Birgersson, except that [ Origin # 02 ] doesn't seem to me of being forged of musical insignificances. It's a good album which follows a curve as much rhythmic as intensely emotive to explode in a bubbling electronic magma where the larvas of synth are squeaking and howling in a cosmos weakened by its black holes. It's magical and outside of this world, like we are able of expecting from this fascinating sculptor of electronic dreams. And say there are two others to come …
Sylvain Lupari (April 2nd, 2013) ***½**
Available at Solar Fields Bandcamp