“Built in the melancholic spirit of Emily Dickinson's poem, here is another powerful and poignant opus from Andy Condom”
1 The Wind Blows Summer from the Trees 49:00
(CD-R 49:00) (V.F.)
(Melodic ambient EM)
Listening The Glimmer Room is like having an inner interview with our life. It's like embracing our most beautiful memories and healing our most profound wounds. More than two years after the troubling and magnificent I Remain, The Glimmer Room returns tortured the reminiscences mislaid in a life abandoned for those of others with an album inspired by Emily Dickinson's deeply moving poem; These are the Days when Birds Come Back. THE WIND BLOWS FROM THE TREES is an intense elegiac opus which consumes its 49 minutes throughout 9 windows where sensible field recordings and samplings as well as soft evanescent melodies bring out the old souvenirs of a sleepy memory. The rhythms are delicate, and the melodies are poignant. A little like in I Remain they are transported in an emotional crescendo by caresses of synth which wave like tears on a wrinkled cheek, such as some invisible tears of a life mislaid in the meanders of its fate.
A spectral voice of an Elfic goddess narrates Emily Dickinson's poem through chilly autumn winds. Those who are familiar with the musical universe of the English poet synthesist recognize these hesitating arpeggios and their delicate harmonies which go down from skies delicately moved by a synth as much sensitive as an old age teardrop. A synth of which the fine oscillations draw shivers in the soul with contemplative and plaintive melodies which cry in the shadows of ambient rhythms moved by impetus full of restraint. The rhythms are more presents that on I Remain. They go and come from their ephemeral rubbings, exception made by this foray of city and folkloric ambiences between part 7 and 8, feeding approaches and dramatic crescendo which ignore themselves. They accept to be lulled by strata as much wrapping as the arms of an absent but wished mother. They hone the palpitations and modulations in front of so much tenderness. Already, we topple over in the depths of our emotions when Part 1 embraces Part 2 and its fragile harmonies which are like breaths from a nostalgic man dying. Everything is so delicate. Everything is also so beautiful. The samplings of children playing with innocence open the 3rd part which pushes even farther the limits of melancholy with some breaths of oracles crying with an infinite abandonment. These synth layers with prism veils and with breaths of pain, which increase their sadness like concerto for tortured souls, feed the melancholic canvas of a work forged in knocks of sorrow of an infinite tenderness, such as the shout of redemption of a repentant lost soul. Through the samplings which depict the life in all the contrariety of its paradoxes, The Glimmer Room draws the immense sides of a work intensely intimist which sometimes caresses our solitude and sometimes feeds its nostalgic source. The synths spread an arsenal of layers and musical waves which move like shadows torturing our past with some somber breaths all so poignant from each other. The rhythms are abstracted and are modulated from layers of emotionalism which roll such as tears trying to go back up in their lachrymal nests. They appear like furtive shadows, set apart the knocks of metronomes in the 10th part, to merge in the harmonious multiplicity of the Elfic tones' layers from a melancholic synth. Like a writer who describes brilliantly the slightest parts of an emotion, Andy Codon plays with nuances and ambiences, pushing even farther the doors of perdition.
And so are flowing the 49 minutes of THE WIND BLOWS FROM THE TREES. Once again The Glimmer Room delivers an ambient opus without defect which follows a stunning ascent of emotional adrenalin. It's a real musical poem which comes with a magnificent notebook, the kind that looks like an ancient book, where the genesis of this album is write on a parchment, showing the romantic and medieval sides of Andy Condon. And if you look for another kind of ambient music, it's about time you discover his music. I made it since its surprising Grey Mirrors in 2004 and I was never disappointed since.
Sylvain Lupari (January 20th, 2013) *****
Available at The Glimmer Room Bandcamp