“A dark and cold album with good warm flights which throw a little sun on what remains of humanity in this metallurgical world”
1 Idophonic Ambience 3:05
2 Density and Pressure 13:25
3 Lightwave (Dedicated to the memory of Susan Belling) 6:30
4 Natchmusik 4:30
5 Dark Gamelans 11:15
6 Cryotainer 9:50
7 Cold Burning 11:20
8 Luminous Gas 4:33
(DDL 64:00) (V.F.)
(Dark & Industrial Ambient music)
The universe and artistic creativity of Stephen Parsick are very progressive and adventurous. I would even dare to say beyond the conventional and the standards established by equally avant-garde artists. The German synthesist does not shy away from challenges, pushing the limits of his imagination and his conception of EM as far as many imaginations can allow. The price to pay remains the anonymity of his creations and of the character. For the rest, it belongs to us because we know that we are entering another dimension. His! CRYOTAINER-MUSIC FOR GASOMETERS is another obscure musical project out of the ordinary. It's a concert in an abandoned and disused gasoline can factory with a temperature of 6 degrees Celsius. A concept to denounce the pollution that few artists would have dared to do. The result is a music that marvellously portrays the ambiences of freezing temperatures in a world of sheet metal and steel, of which the half of ['ramp] portrays with a black coldness these industrial ambiences of a ghost factory. A construction site that has seen many men fall and badly hurt themselves to win a semblance of life.
Dark music tinted with iron and with steel gas emanating from the ghostly remains of a dilapidated factory. A coldness enveloped in soft synth impulses, like a slow dying symphony on the end of a proletarian world abused and stripped of power. And just because it's dark, black, and ambient doesn't mean it's not worth at least an ear. Quite the contrary. The history of artistic conception helping, one follows wonderfully the metallurgical odyssey of its author. Idophonic Ambience immerses us in the steelworks by a very realistic approach with scattered drops of water which ooze here and there while being enveloped in a fine synthesized wave. A wave that doesn't imprison the pious whispers of a daring and conquered audience that hears this slow sound ripple amplify with an oblong heaviness up to Density and Pressure. A title with metallized momentums on the phantom noises of an abandoned factory, but whose soul persists through many boillings and gas exhausts. Throughout Stephen Parsick oversizes the dilapidation of these disused places with an approach that is sometimes dramatic, sometimes silent, but very realistic of a universe in perdition. Slow reverberations roll up and unfold in an icy sphere that Parsick manages to warm up with nice synth layers which envelop, like a coat, a coldness as real as fictitious. At this level, Lightwave and Natchmusik are superb! Heavier and sparse with strange surrealist percussions, Dark Gamelans hoots the suffering of a gas site whose history remains secretly shared by the workers who have left who knows where. A dramatic approach on a big thundering synth with linear breaths and tactile resonances which find a more human warmth on the title-track. While Cold Burning projects the only stormy and lively movement with heavy clicks, like the sound of hammers and masses that deform the sheet metal. A heavy workman's legacy that ends in the hazy ashes of Luminous Gas.
Boldly sluggish and rhythmless but not devoid of soul, CRYOTAINER-MUSIC FOR GASOMETERS is an album reflecting the complexity of the character that is Stephen Parsick. A dark and cold album with good warm flights which throw a little sun on what remains of humanity in this metallurgical world.
Sylvain Lupari (October 20th, 2009) ***½**
Available at [´ramp] Bandcamp