“This is a real journey into the soils of oblivion, there where the mists of Blade Runner float around morphic down-tempos rhythms”
1 Comfortable Void 7:08
2 Inadvertent 7:00
3 Dance of the Droids 6:38
4 1N50MN14 7:05
5 Nanites 7:58
6 Sequor 8:48
7 Something Something 7:26
8 Oomph 10:58
9 Wake (live edit) 9:48
10 There Is No Spoon 8:56
(DDL 77:23) (V.F.)
(Psybient, Down-tempos)
An undulating synth line covers the cloud of radioactive tones that initiates the title-track of the second solo album from Daniel Segerstad, the man behind Sync24 and also Carbon Based Lifeforms. This wave which purifies the sizzling dust of the intro embraces delicate pulsations, guiding Comfortable Void towards a soporific down-tempo slathered of a captivating line of percussions with tones of locusts hiccupping on the same lunar zone as the melodious synth lines which are turning in loops in a bewitching psychedelic-morphic blanket. Built around 10 tracks with rhythms and ambiences topped by openings and conclusions as ambient as ethereal, COMFORTABLE VOID is a real sound journey to the land of emptiness and its artificial breaths which are connected to slow and semi-slow rhythms that an armada of electronic sounds dresses in an aura of moderate psy-trance. Whoever knows the works of Ultimae Records knows in which artistic envelope the works of the Lyonnais label are wrapped. And COMFORTABLE VOID is carefully draped in a beautiful cover that includes an illustrated booklet where Daniel Segerstad explains the ins and outs of his 10 titles that fuel the contemplative emotions of a nothingness described with a lunar poetry.
Caressing the cosmic finale of Comfortable Void, Inadvertent embraces its introductory tranquility to quietly gallop towards a more sustained pace. A rhythm which quivers lazily in vapors of metallic ether to undulate with a velocity retained on a spasmodic line crammed with hatched hoops. These hoops turn like a slow lunar strobe on cosmic and angelic synth lines which crisscross on a rhythm of lead with good percussions and an avalanche of tsitt-tsitt cymbals, sealing the fate of Inadvertent which, without exploding, revives the glimmers of a rhythmic approach that drinks from both hemispheres of Sync24. Besides, the oscillating lines which launch the oblong glaucous pulsations of Dance of the Droids bring us towards these more fluid rhythmic borders. Except that the rhythmic clarity flows in reverberating electronic sinuosities, thus slowing down a rhythm which floats around arpeggios with ringing anvils and residues of organic dust from a molten cosmos. From this place one cannot ignore the discreet chants of the drunken Droids which clap with their metallic hands a robotic and hypnotic cadence. Emerging from the howling synthesized fluids and cosmic drones of a romance-less galaxy, 1N50MN14 clicks from its metallic wings to a slow rhythm plugged into life support and whose melodious approach is closer to the sighs of intergalactic love games than robotic romances. Nanites is a soaring track which floats in an ethereal cosmos whose acid winds stir chimes which ring near obscure voices. The second portion embraces a surreal rhythm of the Islands which quietly submits to the grip of a good morphic down-tempo wandering in the corridors of a drifting cosmos.
A melancholic acoustic guitar pierces the ethereal clouds of Sequor which is a sweet cosmic ballad for cowboys with lost illusions. Something Something shakes the membrane of inertia which envelops COMFORTABLE VOID since 1N50MN14 with a good bass line with round menacing pulsations. The rhythm is soft and elastic with synth strata which coo in a lunar decoration, floating with the airs of a nice melody with hybrid arpeggios dreaming in a sphere of slamming percussions. It is undoubtedly the most beautiful title of this album with Oomph whose intro slumbers in a dense cloud of ocher mist where whispers and sinuous synth lines are behind a rhythm which is slow to hatch. And it is around the 4th minute that it appears. Arched on percussions whose successive strikes are pierced by wooden resonances, this long minimalist rhythm spreads out its 7 minutes adorned with fine scintillating arpeggios which sparkle with an allegorical chant on an oscillating structure of its stroboscopic spasms. Wake marries the same structural tangent with a morphic intro which releases a good melodious synth line whose hoops cradle nothingness and these fine and brilliant pulsations/percussions which secrete an evasive rhythm. We waltz in the void when a jerky line delivers spasmodic riffs that surround stroboscopic pulsations and tsitt-tsitt cymbals, molding imperfect rotations that saturate in a form of techno intended for space clones. This rhythmic raid of COMFORTABLE VOID is exhausted in the multi-plasmic layers of There Is No Spoon, a superb ambient title which seems to come out of the melancholy atmospheres of Blade Runner, an album which certainly served as the basis for this haunting ode to nothingness and to its shameful instincts of seduction.
Sylvain Lupari (July 17th, 2012) ***¼**
Available at SYNC24 Bandcamp