ANDREAS AKWARA: Pathos (CD on AA Music, distributed by Groove Unlimited)
This CD from 2003 features 79 minutes of inspirational electronic music.
The skies cry, and church bells herald the emergence of solid rhythms and luxurious melody. Synthesizers generate swimming harmonics with a rising tide of embellishing punctuations. Wavering tones blend with atmospheric textures, creating a mood of pleasant anticipation. As the music's substantiality fleshes itself out, a mood of reverence becomes more and more dominant, conveying optimistic yearning. Faux horns announce the arrival of sadness, reminding the audience of mortality and the limited scope of human understanding. This melancholy is set upon by more optimistic harmonies that goad the spirit upward. Serious morbidity is now tempered with anticipatory hope, delivering the music to an expansive stretch that belays any desolation.
Sweeping chords are accompanied by softly insistent synthetic rhythms. Some of these applications of artificial beats are refreshingly inventive, blending mechanical sounds with humanist disposition. Like small pools of amorphous consistency, meandering passages separate the more melodic expressions, serving to enhance the crisp emergence of resonant satisfaction. These islands of engaging melody stand as focused oases amid the sobering sonic flow.
The state of pathos is often a road paved with morose introspection, but this music cuts through that emotional descent, providing a promise of accomplishment and fulfillment at the end of the depression.
DOC WÖR MIRRAN: Lasher (CD on Tremor Recordings)
This release from 1999 features 50 minutes of experimental electronic music inspired by the Anne Rice books "The Witching Hour", "Lasher", and "Taltos".
Doc Wö:r Mirran is: Joseph B. Raimond, Jeandra Raimond, Susan Raimond, Michael Asch, Peter Schuster, John Mervin, Adrian Alecu, and Mariene Schild.
Melancholy tonalities blend with atmospheric keyboards to produce a terse but evocative mood of darkness haunted by human and inhuman needs. Orchestral instruments lurk deep in the mix, hiding from the audience, but revealing their plaintive sounds to discerning ears. Harps and violins provide some substantive presence, delineating a desolate romantic flair to the tuneage. These gypsy airs are followed by angst-ridden machinery squealing in the mud of a bloody battlefield. A forced quietude emerges, and distant sounds approach punctuated by "shh"ing advice. Tension increases as acoustic guitar and tambourine lend minimal embellishment. Breathing becomes a dominant instrument amid rattlings and scrapings, as if something strives to escape the music and take up residence in the listener's psyche. When least expected, there is a conventional "song" with strummed guitar and petulant percussion and wavering accordion. Then the sonic flow returns to an abstract demeanor of growling electronics littered with gasped wheezing and vocal laments. At this point, the mood returns to a campfire motif with erratic percussion and meandering basslines and soulful violin. The CD concludes with a delicate harp piece that celebrates loneliness.
While the instrumentation is often sparse, the overall result is eerie and often disturbing. The melodies are dark and brooding, frequently structured as an escalation of melodrama.
KLANGWELT: The Age of Numbers (CD on Spheric Music)
This release from 2003 features 78 minutes of energized electronic music.
Klangwelt is Gerald Arend.
Sprightly keyboards generate a lush electronic pattering of rhythms and riffs. The gestalt is engaging as the melodies enter jubilant stages, transforming numerics into melody.
Deeply resonant tones are countered by quirky high-end chords. Nimble fingers trigger synthetic percussion into dramatic tempos. Shrill cybernetics embark on peppy excursions of diligent harmonic quality. The keyboards frequently adopt a string-like timbre that lends a classical air to the sonic equation; this combination of tradition and futurism is striking and gregarious. Complexity gradually overwhelms many of the tracks as simplistic structures grow denser and hyperactive with winning variations. Toy-like qualities are infused with adult posture, resulting in enticing euphonies that reach for the sky.
While remaining winsomely appealing, there is often a driving urgency to the fast-paced compositions. Velocities may vary, but a sense of elegance persists, even in the light-hearted tracks. When things become frantic, the frenzy is cerebral and celebratory.
Spoken words discussing fractals and mathematics are utilized to embellish some of the pieces.
JOHN LAKVEET: Building Sequential Stones, Ecclesias Cathedrales Aedificans, Volume 1 (CD on Groove Unlimited)
This release from 2003 features 75 minutes of sequencer electronics.
Crafted in the sequencer-heavy Berlin School style of electronic music, Lakveet's compositions explore this mode in short-form, the average track clocking in at between three to five minutes. This brief duration compresses the drama and expression of his music, increasing the directness of the tuneage.
Crystalline electronics cavort with solemn delineation, goaded by chords-as-rhythms into peppy tunes of engaging disposition. Atmospheric foundations drift in conjunction with more demonstrative embellishment as cyclic riffs explore interesting variations of meticulous intent. Shrill tones merge with ethereal elements, all harnessed into fanciful melodies that strive to pay homage to structures of antediluvian granite. This connection of sound and stone produces a stirring mood, one in which ancient traditions are converted into modern expressions of technological codification. The cathedrals of olden become houses of digital worship, conjoining the past and the future in fabrications of sparkling melodies.
Jubilant riffs unfold in commodious union with deliberately pensive electronic textures. Passion evolves with every passing moment, infecting everything from amorphous vapors to emphatic core sounds, and attributing a grandeur to the whole. Just as cathedrals were humanity's crude means of elevating their beliefs to be nearer to their deity, this music acts as a sonic bridge between man and sky, uniting earth and heaven for intrinsic appreciation.
ZERO ONE: Psy-Fi (CD on Spiralight)
This release from 2003 features 63 minutes of pleasant electronic music.
Zero One is Kevin Dooley.
Sparkling electronics are accompanied by soft E-perc, evoking a relaxed cosmic journey through the cosmos. Airy keyboards unfurl sedate riffs that undulate overhead with congenial disposition, defining tuneage of delicate crystalline quality. Hazy tonalities float in the distance, providing a celestial backdrop for the affable chords that cavort in the foreground. The computerized rhythms alternate between predictable patterns and eccentric tempos which are used to punctuate instances of accelerated vigor.
Some spoken word vocals are present, quietly enhancing the flow with verbal guidance.
These compositions are unhurried and soothing, utilizing a mellow focus to achieve pleasant melodies that tickle the back-brain with their furry appeal. There's a simplicity going on here that is infused with a charming humanity that equitably compensates that austerity.
This enhanced CD features four extra tracks as MP3s.
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