“From down-tempo to ambient by passing by psychedelic synth-pop and Schulzian Berlin School style, Layers is a fair of rhythms and ambiances”
1 Desert of Lost Blessings 7:04 2 Violent Sunrise 4:58 3 Skanvas 4:09 4 No More Synchronisation 3:37 5 Regrets are Just the Start 5:20 6 Soundwaves Breathing on my Neck 4:42 7 Modern Losses 6:02 8 Nocturn 6:02 9 Compliment of the Trees 5:52 SynGate | CD-r TG01
(CD-r 47:48) (V.F.) (Psybient ,down-tempos, synth-pop and Berlin School)
Finally, and it's about time, Tangram breaks through the anonymity of the Internet to be associated with the big names of German EM. It's by the means of SynGate that the Hungarian musician Peter Fabok offers us a very beautiful album which aims to be one of the beautiful hidden surprises of 2012. LAYERS is soaking in what EM has of more beautiful to offer; an imagination to the service of its multiple equipments. Throughout of the 9 tracks which skim over all the kinds of rhythms and structures of contemporary EM, Tangram weaves a surprising musical journey in the heart of an electronic jungle where the rhythms to the multiple forms and the atmospheres, as well seraphic, morphic as organic attracts us in the inextricable passages of time and of its vestiges.
Desert of Lost Blessings begins the adventure with a rivulet of arpeggios of which the melodious reflections are sparkling under synth layers with hybrid tones. A line of sequences flies over the intro, making swirl its ions as a helix of helicopter while that another line of rhythm lays down a recurrent pattern which runs in loops beneath some musical light beams which sweep the rhythmic horizon of a dark ambiospherical veil. A melodious snippet extricates itself from this motionless rhythm. As the cooing of an automated bird it goes and comes in a repetitive figure, entailing percussions which mould a good cosmic down-tempo of which the undulatory rhythm flows under these dark breaths which stay by the side of the constancy of a rhythm subdivided by its two parallel lines. Violent Sunrise appears in our ears with a tone of waterfall which could be as well the noises of traffic of a highway in the middle of the night. Suction cups are doing a kind of smooth talking in a stereophonic effect on the head of ions which waddle, waiting for a more frank rhythm which gets a foothold on a movement of sequences and of its ions which chirp in a mesmerizing hypnotic spiral. Another staccato line is hatching out and frees organic tones which swirl in a stroboscopic filet above the stealthy chords of a bass line and of its hesitating structure of rhythm. Sober percussions become allied to the jingles of cymbals of which the tones of metallic elytrons resound in the morphic strata of a synth that can only caressed this rhythm more organic than unreal. And the more we move forward and the more we are subjugated by this somatic sound fauna which spreads its winged filets from which the crisscrossed lines crackle in the erosive atmospheres of Skanvas. From its finale rises a swarming carpet of sequences which makes overflow its jumping keys into a dislocated symbiosis until the static rhythm of No More Synchronisation which waddles under a sky darkened by a synth and its solos floating in a scent of the Grim Reaper.
Regrets are Just the Start embraces the rhythmic ashes of Desert of Lost Blessings to overflow in a kind of psychedelic break-dance which has difficulty in finding a shape of steady rhythm in an environment weaved by heterogeneous synth tones which, on the other hand, have no difficulty to shape the melodious part. Soundwaves Breathing on my Neck plunges us into some very Klaus Schulze ambiences and of his drummed pulsations à la Timewind which pound in the loops of synths and of their harmonious cooings. In fact, the title says it all. Modern Losses dives into a good robotic synth-pop with a melodious approach weaver of earworm. One would believe to hear a mixture of Kraftwerk and Gary Numan. Sometimes slow and sometimes softly lively, the rhythm evolves by phases under some superb solos of a synth which is not afraid of throwing more infantile melodies. This is some good intelligent synth-pop. Nocturn reflects the origins of its naming with some silky synth layers which waltz in the tones of Theremin waves and of which the interlacing is the equivalent of a copulation of whales far, far in the cosmos. It's as quiet as the inner beauty should be. Compliment of the Trees takes back the guides of the rhythm with a good mid-tempo, a bit technoïd, with brief harmonies of which the hou-hou runs in loops on pulsations/percussions which beat a bit like those of Bowie in Let's Dance. The synths throw clouds of white noises and morphic envelopes on a rhythm of which the subtle evolution passes by a richer harmonious intensity.
From down-tempo to ambient by passing by psychedelic synth-pop and Berlin School, LAYERS is a fair of rhythms and ambiances which amazes so much by its diversity that by its capacity of seduction throughout this very eclectic maze of styles. Active since 2005, via his own platforms of download, Peter Fabok shows his maturity and his confidence in his compositions by offering a work as high as the big names of the contemporary EM. You will love this one!
Sylvain Lupari (May 4th, 2013) *****
Available at SynGate's Bandcamp