“I won't say that this TMI is the best from Syndromeda, hut it contains all those sonic elements that will please the most capricious fan of a dark and progressive modern EM”
1 Starchild 21:20 2 All is One 13:58 3 The Point of No Return 31:56 SynGate | CD-r SS21
(CD/DDL 67:16) (V.F.) (Dark ambient and progressive EM)
There are artists, like that, who are well in their style. Artists who, album after album year after year, put their way of doing at the agenda by bringing to it a little, or not at all, of modification in their music or in their structures. Syndromeda is among this obscurantist's race for whom EM is necessarily the privilege of long movements more or less rhythmic which eat themselves from the inside with ambient rhythms which make some repetitive arches in ambiences about which we just don't know if the influences come of that era of Baumann in Tangerine Dream or from Youri Gagarine's visions when the eyes of the Russian cosmonaut have contemplated the grooves of the black hole. TMI (TOO MUCH INFORMATION) is more or less his 29th album. And with its 3 long sonic acts which develop structures in continual movement, the music of Danny Budts always stays in these territories where the hell stretches its aura up to the door of the cosmos. So nothing really new, but only good cosmic progressive EM!
Dark winds which breathe and drone. Hoarse breezes which buzz like the suction cups of an octopus. Synth lines and their iridescent tints which squeak by twisting themselves of pleasure. Some scattered and random explosions with felted tones and with metallic radiations. The introduction of Starchild plunges the visitor of Danny Budts into the metapsychic universe of TMI and, by ricochet, into the one of the cool-headed Syndromeda. The atmospheres are black, even sordid, with this mixture of quirky tones which forms a dense ambiospherical opening and crumbs the first 5 minutes of Starchild. The first movement of rhythm unties some keys which skip slyly, separating shadows which dance slightly in parallel in the thick layers of voices of satanic monks. A synth loosens its tongue and decorates the atmospheres of this electronic dialect so dear to the signature of Syndromeda, structuring another phase of rhythm which drops some harmonious strands among which some are good solos filled by radioactive perfumes which tear the eardrums in a heavy magma of bass tones. Danny Budts structures here a fight between phases of rhythms, of abstruse voices and harmonies pretty much convoluted where our ears become flooded by a sonic flow more intense than the structures of rhythms poly-phased but always relatively ambient. Only a lone structure will unknot its keys which will snake in a finale flooded of anesthetic mist. It's the universe of Syndromeda which goes on, album after album and always with the same charms.
All is One attacks our ears with an alloy of heavy industrial pulsations and a fascinating concerto of crickets with metallic wings. Muted knockings and voices of astronauts which seem in trouble decorate these apocalyptic minutes that an intense wave of synth is covering of a shroud a la Phaedra. There are other assorted noises which decorate this intro, but what holds the more the attention is this catchy line of sequences which emerges a little before the point of 4 minutes, giving even more weight to this comparison with the universe of Tangerine Dream of the 73-74 years. Another line is hatching on the quiet, creating a delicious duel between the organic chirping of the first one and this neighboring movement which is more familiar to our ears. Solos, always so familiar with this electronic language of Syndromeda, are flowing with long iridescent twists, caressing a superb structure of rhythm of which the protean breaths will drive All is One towards a finale which remembers the dark perfumes of its birth. It's, and by far, the best moment of TMI which ends with the very long The Point of No Return and of its too long ambiospherical introduction. We have to wait around 15 minutes before that some scattered percussions shake these tetanizing moods. The synth tosses some tearful solos, a little like the moaning of ectoplasms. It's a heavy glaucous atmosphere which besieges our ears and euthanizes bit by bit our senses. We are at the 18th minute and these atmospheres become stifling with layers of voices which make duel between hell and heavens. The movement is magnetizing. And finally, some tom-toms arrive and untie its shadows. The moods are breathing of a delicate beat. The shadows chirp in parallel with organic tints in their tones. Gradually, the division of this entity of ambient rhythm forges another and superb pattern of rhythm where the tom-toms and the sequences bicker in a delicious complex disorder which will last only a few moments before The Point of No Return ties up with its too long ambient shape.
Nothing is really lost, and nothing is really created in the universe of TMI which is in perfect accordance with the one that Syndromeda offers to his fans since 20 years. The atmospheres here are more contemporary with a thick cloud of convoluted tones and perfumes. They remain also very chthonian. They always embalm these structures of rhythms at the same time complex, attractive and hypnotic which wake Danny Budts' tales of horror or science fiction. I won't say that it's the best from Syndromeda, but I'll say that it contains all the sonic ingredients that will seduce the fans of an EM a bit experimental and always very dark.
Sylvain Lupari (August 15th, 2015) ***¾**
Available at SynGate Bandcamp