“This album is embroidered in structures of progressive EM with a soft scent of psychedelicosmic mood that is unique to Syndromeda's works”
1 Glad they Finally Arrived 9:56
2 On and On 12:32
3 Iceland Memories 14:02
4 Homeless 11:11
5 Boiled Brain 11:45
6 Back to the Tribe 9:00
7 With a Sparkle of Light 7:00
(CD-r/DDL 75:28) (V.F.)
(Prog and psy Berlin School style)
Borrowing his storytellers' suit of psychotroni-cosmic stories, Danny Budts offers a new work of musical literature which contrarily to Waiting for the Second Sun, and this even if the structures are very alike, is more down-to-earth. Except that if the story is pulled of the souvenirs from a journey that the Belgian synthesist did in the Arctic territories of Iceland and Norway, and its islands of Lofoten and Spitsbergen, TIME WILL NEVER BE THE SAME stays embroidered inside the structures of a progressive EM with this soft perfume of psychedelicosmic mood which is unique to the works of Syndromeda.
Delicate arpeggios which twinkle and sparkle of coldness open this album. A line of felted sequences sneaks in between these tones of cold crystal, molding a fast step of three which establishes the rhythmic approach of Glad they Finally Arrived. Another line of sequences, with more furtive keys, goes deeper into a minimalist rhythmic pattern which dances on the spot, such as an amputated tango, moving forward and moving back between these lines of crisscrossed sequences. A synth adds its zest of charm with a melody whistled by some lyrical buntings of which the singings float in bluish mists and rivulet of silvery arpeggios. And, in the play of the comparisons, we can say that two quite different phases of Tangerine Dream are in confrontation, while that quietly the rhythm changes its shape for a soft mid-tempo which tries a breakthrough towards a morphic techno. One and One present a noisy and boiling movement of sequences which oscillate heavily, weaving the faces of a loud rhythm that another line of sequence, with a pattern of robotic melody, confines into a stillness approach. Breezes of synth more organic than harmonic go through this passive rhythm, dragging it towards a heavy ambient passage where are threatening these hoarse breezes whereas the hiccupping rhythm and the melody, always full of cybernetic candour, are dancing til the dawn of oblivion. The tenebrous and murky ambiences invade the very ambiospherical introduction of Iceland Memories and of its chthonian choruses which hum along the heavy and somber hollow breaths, raising some particles of prism which spread a mood of cosmic coldness on an intro of which the multiplicity of the breaths and their crisscrossed tones are drawing the metallic buzzing of space shuttles at low speed. A bass line beats furtively, drawing little by little the spheroidal forms of an ethereal ascent where a mixture of celestial voices, dark singings and industrial mooing cover this intriguing minimalist march which finds an ally in the more crystal clear sequences which spin with a spiral harmony in a chthonian tumult.
Homeless adopts the same pattern of ambiguous blackness on a disjointed rhythmic skeleton. The approach draws its inspirations from Glad they Finally Arrived with a bipolar rhythmic structure. The intro is bathing in an atmosphere of suspicion with its heavy deafening breezes and its vocoder fills by sermons a bit satanic stalk which plunges us into the psychotronic frenzies of Neuronium. The rhythm is blazed with heavy and black bang-bangs which beat in a hypnotic frenzy among the lines of undulatory sequences and the breaths as hoarse as nasal of synth, bringing the listener into an underworld unique to the Gothic signature of Syndromeda. And the rhythm to change shapes and the ambiences of colors, mixing their pulsing and oscillating phases into a delicious lunar techno where the nasal synth pads, the lines starry of thoughts as much cosmic as the twisted solos and the ethereal voices are melt in an ultimate psychedelicosmic symbiosis of the vintage years. It's a very good track in the repertory of Syndromeda who blows our ears with the powerful and puzzling Boiled Brain and its tentacular arms to the arrhythmic pulsations from which the hesitating chords vacillate in a noisy fauna drawn by the multi-sonic streaks of a synth and its singing solos along a dense shower of cybernetic tones. The mood is black and weaved in the universe of paranormal with these spectral hooting which become engorged of mist and black choruses. If the rhythm is at first muddled, it takes a more intense shape with a mixture of pulsations and percussions which set up a linear structure that hostile synths cross of rotatory solos, of shrill singings and of mists filled with chthonian voices, a little as the beams of a lighthouse enlightening an ice floe flooded with spectral creatures. Back to the Tribe is an intense tribal trance with stormy tom-toms hammering a fluid rhythm which is smothered by the shouts and the lamentations of the intellectual frenzy of the dancers, the rustles of the wizards and the hoarse breaths of the didgeridoo which lay a climate of tribal psychosis that would fit quite well in Steve Roach's works, if it wasn't of its subtle demonic approach. With a Sparkle of Light continues the exploration of rhythms and tribal ambiences with a heathen feast on a rhythm closer of the collective hypnosis where all the elements of the electronic singings and the prayers of Back to the Tribe are present, plus the trance incantations of Papajeahja.
TIME WILL NEVER BE THE SAME is not easily accessible. The music is either heavy, static or fluid and is flooded by synths with always incisive solos but among which the tones and lamentations are sculptured in a sonic alloy to the harmonies demonized by some sulphurous patterns of crisscrossed sequences lines where the dream becomes easily nightmare. In brief, a beautiful album in the lineage of the very good works of Syndromeda where the structures of a vintage Berlin School are flooded with this para-psychological approach that Danny Budts likes to leave his imprints in the furrows of our ears.
Sylvain Lupari (April 15th, 2013) ***¾**
Available at SynGate Bandcamp