SYSTEM 7:Encantado (CD on A-Wave Records)
This release from 2004 features 71 minutes of innovative techno.
System 7 is: Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy.
Hillage’s guitar stylings are unlike any other musical beast. His notes ricochet around in an intangible zone, creating weaving interactions wholly different from traditional overlapping or devious treatments. The resultant chords possess a vibrant yet ethereal quality that is sprightly invigorating while stridently mesmerizing. When these chords are applied to nimble riffs, the consequence is often zestfully hyperactive, yet this blur of melody can also be physically soothing.
Couple these agile guitars with Hillage’s and Giraudy’s lavish electronic dexterity, and you get music brimming with opulent exuberance and shimmering garnish. A profusion of electronic waves and effects swarm like congenial germs, infecting everything in their reach with their engaging appeal. The tunes ride a rigorous rollercoaster of these synthetic sounds, compressed and collaged to form intricate tapestries of pulsating harmonies.
Incredibly snappy percussive rhythms bloom like cybernetic blossoms, propagating into a meadow of insistent tempos and filling the air with dance-inducements. Even the CD’s softer tracks cannot restrain their emphatic enthusiasm, hopping about with the rhythms’ intricate and contagious mirth.
Although the music is generally sans vocals, some vocal loops are employed in one song to direct the listener into inward rumination, while another track includes some trancey chorales to articulate the piece’s dreamy quality.
This tuneage crackles with high energy, sultry and mesmerizing. The electronics and e-perc generate a luscious panorama of cavorting melodies, and the manner in which the guitar repeatedly enhances the mix is tremendously exhilarating. The guitar adds a distinctly invigorating edge to this music, injecting hooks and riffs that are ordinarily unfound in conventional techno. This unique component sends the tuneage soaring leagues higher than its peers, bursting from the templates established by most rave concerts and expanding the music into a whole new genre.
Thoroughly dazzling, the tunes found on this release are mouth-watering fodder for endless sonic banquets.
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