Syndromeda Waiting for the Second Sun (2010)

“An album built in a very progressive, even psychedelic, Berlin School style, Waiting for the Second Sun is as good as difficult to tame”

1 Checking the Crop Circle 13:55   

2 Voices from the Hidden Future 13:37  

3 Ups & Downs 9:12 

4 Symphony of Hope 12:55 

5 Era of the Good 10:27 

6 The Arrival of the Second Sun 15:35

SynGate | CD-r SS10 

(CD-r 75:41) (V.F.)

(Prog and psy Berlin School style)

Inspired of a comic book where a man was living in a place where two suns shaped some superb shadows and on a prophecy where the earth would become a second sun, Danny Budts proposes in WAITING FOR THE SECOND SUN an EM album which is rather difficult to tame. An EM tinted by a very progressive, even psychedelic, Berlin School style where Syndromeda doesn't hesitate to shape some abstract rhythms which stir themselves under arrhythmic sequences. Sequences which are melt in a heavy universe, illuminated by synth lines and organic tones where the seething strata merge such as a multicolored coulis in an ambience which is more chthonian than celestial. An ambience with a second sun burning of a dark energy. A dead world, where the breaths of synths to tones and rustlings as much caustic as metallic are shaping the shade of a life as much puzzling as fascinating. But don't you be mistaken we are well and truly in the fascinating musical universe of Syndromeda.

Resonant sequences are staggering heavily under the eye of a synth and its heavy gyrating waves. The intro of Checking the crop circle is heavy and drops a thick cloud of sequences, as much coherent as undisciplined, which slowly form a musical weft to the abstract rhythm where synths hoot in a strange ambience of Mephistophelian cosmic. Somber choruses are made heard. They are hardly audible and they sound more the sulfur of the darkness than a celestial harmony which murmur on the strata of a synth at the same time neurotic and aggressive. A synth creating a chaos of distortions where the melodious approach is howling and oppressive, but whose sequences in constant rhythmic changes add a strange depth to this track heavy of its caustic resonances. Here is a Black Cosmic Rock as I rarely heard. The first 4 minutes of Voices from the Hidden Future offer an ambient structure where a soft synth is waltzing in a cosmos saturated by ethereal choruses. Then a soft movement of sequences subdivides the hybridity of its rhythm, creating a hopping pace which hiccups on the indiscipline of its chords. Gradually the rhythm becomes more fluid and swirls such as a spinning-top perfumed of an astral luminosity where intense circular waves and nervous sequences draw a more and more melodious cosmic structure, thanks in particular to a synth and its very well chiselled solos which quietly are sheltering its melodious approach trapped in its introductory ambient structure.

With its echoing stridencies of a world in fusion which weave an abstract sound painting, Ups and Downs offers an unusual tribal dance of a world living between two borders. The drummed sequences are forming a rhythm of Baladi dance beneath the fragrances of a synth of which the initial stridencies become tangled with those spectral waves and a singular language, like in the era of the psychedelic and fuzz wah-wah years. The synth derives slowly in a floating zone to the oblong diurnal breaths where the sequenced pulsations introduce this strange belly dancing. This drummed sequential movement, very near the soft rhythms of Klaus Schulze and his early works by the way, is also a part of this unusual celestial march which follows the superb orchestral movement to the thousand violin chords opening Symphony of Hope. Still there, Danny Budts' mordant synth is biting quite hard this abstract structure where the crystalline progression of a sequenced rhythmic is constantly dependent on an indomitable beauty. Era of the Good is as much delicious as luciferian with its dark choruses of which the weak incantations pierce a synth veiled of beautiful morphic strata. Slowly the rhythm settles down. A rhythm sustained by nice electronic percussions and of which the notes of a guitar add a harmonious depth until then absent in this somber opus. It's unarguably the most beautiful track on WAITING FOR THE SECOND SUN. The Arrival of the Second Sun is a slow morphic procession gradually livened up by good sequences with the harmonies as sensitive than thoughtful, reflecting the harmonious beauty that we find on Era of the Good. Beautiful strata which waltz with a soporific slowness are moulding a mesmerizing spatial melody where the murmurs to the illegible echoes float in an ambience fed by sequences became more insistent, but which not disturb at all a rhythm as much vaporous as its ambience. It's a great track, very enthralling which throws a little balm on this caustic musical vision that is WAITING FOR THE SECOND SUN.

Sylvain Lupari (May 16th, 2010) *****

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