“A good CD that seduces by its diversity of genres and by the numerous rhythmic bounces”
1 Near UFO (Nattefrost) 8:28
2 Help Murder Help 2010 (PPM) 6:36
3 The Ceremony of Innocence (Mark Jenkins) 8:40
4 Midsummer's Morning (PPM) 5:26
5 Exploration Drive (Airsculpture) 19:32
6 Array of Fading Flowers (PPM)) 4:39
7 In a Forgotten Time (deZeptive remix) (Nattefrost) 5:32
(CD 58:55) (V.F.)
(Berlin School, Post E-Rock, Synth-Pop)
Like each year the label Groove nl holds its E-Live festival. The Dutch label produces in parallel a CD with unreleased tracks of the artists invited to this annual festival that attracts its legion of fans. This E-LIVE 2010 featured a line-up of guests with contrasting styles, ranging from the pure and heavy Berlin School (Air Sculpture) to a more rhythmic electronic music (EM) (Nattefrost) while caressing the effluvia of a more aggressive and psychedelic music (Picture Palace Music) and a delicate cosmic ode (Mark Jenkins). The result is an astonishing musical collage where Ron Boots has done an ingenious job of mastering to insert and melt different styles into an EM album where the contemporaneity of the genres fit very well into one opus. And in the end, E-LIVE 2010 is a good CD that seduces as much by its diversity of genres as by the numerous rhythmic bounces.
Nattefrost starts things up with Near UFO. This 1998 composition starts with a menacing synth wave that spreads its heavy ethereal synth layers. Ghostly layers float with fine modulations, just before the synth sings a melody hooked to analog years. The beat is loud with a heavy sequenced movement whose keys gallop frantically in a cosmic echo. Heavy and rhythmic, Near UFO embraces the quiet cosmic breaths before bitten again the rhythm for a staggering race under the aegis of lyrical synth solos in the style of Jean-Michel Jarre and which are filled with a nice ambient haze. A big synth pop that precedes the psychedelic electronic rock (E-Rock) of Picture Palace Music and its curt guitar riffs that drag in oblivion, feeding the furious rhythm of Help Merder Help 2010. Track found on Fairy Marsh Districts, it raises this compilation with a heavy and incisive approach closer to the roots of psychedelic rock than electronic as such, on a dark and frenzied rhythm unique to the musical world of PPM. Following this heavy psy rock Mark Jenkins tempers the moods by introducing us to his ingenious musical world with The Ceremony of Innocence. A track entirely conceived with an I-Pad; this is a delicate cosmic ode where Alquimia's delicious voice is in delicate contrast with the gravity of Arthur Brown's. An ambient track structured on layers of discreet synth and under a panoply of cosmic sounds, The Ceremony of Innocence is of a strange dreamlike beauty. Thorsten Quaeschning's gang comes back to charm our ears with a calmer track where a piano drags its heavy melancholy through many whispers. Midsummer's Morning, from the Midsummer album, admirably follows the poetic paths of The Ceremony of Innocence.
Exploration Drive from Air Sculpture alone is worth the price of this E-LIVE 2010. A great twenty-minute track, divided by an eclectic ambient passage, which begins by a delicate sequenced movement of which keys bounce and shake feverishly on a hypnotic linear movement. Incisive, these hybrid tones sequences are flown over by a synth which let drops good nostalgic breezes among gurgling and caustic breaths as much psychedelic as spectral, reminiscences of the first audacities of the English trio. And it is through this dance of a sequenced multiplicity that Exploration Drive progresses up until the doors of a cosmic nothingness, where heavy twisted layers with slow and sinuous synth reverberations purr in a metallic atmosphere. A short ambient passage from which isolated sequences escape and end up forging a nervous rhythmic line, supported by a good bass line. This convulsive rhythm propels the last part of this long track towards an arrhythmic measure while being surrounded by a synth with breaths and melodies tinged of musical memories. After such a complex and progressive track, PPM's Array of Fading Flowers adds a more melodic side with this track from Symphony for Vampires. The track is sculpted in a hybrid rock with a synth-pop tangent chipped of by the dark and very medieval universe of this superb album made in 2008. Nattefrost closes this E-LIVE 2010 by another heavy track with sequences that pulsate, jump and clash under a synth with undulating breaths. In a Forgotten Time (deZeptive remix) is more contemporary Nattefrost with a vision of synth-pop on a nervous and jerky rhythm, embraced by furtive keyboards chords and a very robotic vocoder. The sequences are heavy and jump in harmony with the electronic percussions to give a good electronic rock with a light flavor of synth-pop.
Sylvain Lupari (February 9th, 2011) *****
Available at Groove nl
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