“The music of Syndromeda joins the limits of an imagination overflowing with cerebral challenges. And there are some very good on this XXX”
1 Excitement 14:58 2 Passion 24:16 3 A Quickie 5:11 4 Hormonal Effects 16:11 5 My Darkest Wishes 11:05 SynGate | CD-R SS24
(CD-r 71:43) (V.F.) (Progressive Berlin School)
The tones of sequences, the tones of effects and the harmonies of the synths. Magic and unique, they are the seal of an electronic music which distances itself while being difficult to cajole. The music of Syndromeda! And nevertheless, year after year, album after album, Danny Budts persists and signs with an EM of which the charms ask that to be picked by ears which want to hear something a little out of the ordinary. XXX is the 30th album of the Belgian synthesist. Playing on one of the oldest themes in the story of the mankind, Danny Budts proposes more than 70 minutes of EM for the senses in his unique sound signature where rhythms and elements of ambiences always arise from these particles of ether and from twilights which perfume the universe of Syndromeda.
It's with a mini festival of chirping and of organic beatings that Excitement falls in our ears. A song of bird which has just received its dose of sex extricates itself from this weft of excitement. These songs pierce a dense membrane of bitter mists, while the rhythmic skeleton takes form with wide oscillating loops which go and come in a thick cloud of undulations as fluid as a hand waltzing in the emptiness. The movement of sequences loses its shadows which little by little forge a rhythmic in parallel under resounding twists. Between sweetness and tumult, Syndromeda play with the pace of the sequencer, structuring quieter and\or ambivalent phases where the diversity of the tones cavorts as snooper wolves in this universe of ambiguity that Danny Budts paints of many allegorical colors. Passion spreads its 24 minutes with a heavy introduction developed in the mysticism. An enormous sound flame, laying down on the side, spreads its brilliances which are in contrast with its meditative beauty. The black, as the white and the blue are floating lasciviously with a strange chthonian sigh until a first movement of the sequencer hiccups of an uncertain structure which rises and comes down, goes and comes in a strange perfume of beatitude. I like the vision of A Quickie and its sequences which flow with so much fluidity into a motionless structure decorated with layers and with sighs which are so obvious.
It's in a constellation illuminated of a thousand fires that Hormonal Effects ties up to our ears. A very familiar song of communication with extraterrestrials lights our memories while an enormous monasteric layer falls with a dramatic impact. A very good movement of sequences loosens a structure sewn of one thousand jumps which skip in a double synth line, a dreadful one and another one more melodious. It's this approach in halftone which seduces the most in Hormonal Effects. Egyptian songs and others more Gregorian decorate gallantly a very good Berlin School structure of rhythm which maintains its static pace in this shroud of ambient effects always in constant mutation which offers us some more of those paradisiac songs as the seconds run out in time. A very good title of Syndromeda! My Darkest Wishes attracts us in Danny Budts' very shady universe. There where the twists of synth wriggle in sonic magma from where rise night hootings. A heavy sequencing pattern, resonant a la Redshift, comes at the end of these ambiences up to the boiling point of 5 minutes, leaving all the passage to this resounding movement and to its sizzling shadow. Violent, the approach remains all the same sedentary in a heavy cosmic rock unique to these related tones which ring and dance in this universe sewn of parallelism of Syndromeda.
A very personal album for Danny Budts, XXX is in the vein of the very good albums, I consider that it's one of his very good since a few years, of Syndromeda. Some good heavy and buzzing sequences which beat various motionless and always evolutionary paces in a sound decoration worthy of the inside of a boiling volcano, the music of Syndromeda joins the limits of an imagination overflowing with cerebral challenges. And there are some very good here. Hormonal Effects is good to the bone!
Sylvain Lupari (May 8th, 2017) *****
Available at SynGate Bandcamp