BINAR: Spindragons (limited edition CD on Ricochet Dream)
This release from 2006 offers 54 minutes of exciting electronic music.
Binar is: Andy Pickford and Paul Nagle.
A versatile nest of electronics produces a thoroughly engaging palette that vibrates and pulsates with inventive vigor. Slippery riffs stream through clouds of twinkling effects while bass tones throb on the periphery. Sometimes the pace becomes more frantic as urgent chords struggled to dominate the audience's attention. The rest of the electronics maintain judicious control over these disruptive elements, though, submerging them to a level that allows them to engross without overwhelming the tunes. While at other points, everything cooperates to produce a soothing somnambulant disposition of serpentine quality.
Comfortable rhythms inject sultry locomotion for these mesmerizing excursions into dreamy realms. The beats are crisp and bewitching, achieving tempos that propel without exhausting the listener or interfering with the music itself.
Vocal samples are periodically introduced into the compositions, generating tantalizing hints of information amid the melodic flow.
Overall, a stunningly rewarding dose of tuneage that runs the gamut from overt dynamic to dreamy calm. The central commonality is engaging creativity that captivates as it hypnotizes.
JAVI CANOVAS: Light Echoes (CD on Neu Harmony)
This release from 2006 offers 67 minutes of feverish electronic music
There are three tracks on this release, each averaging 20 minutes in length, affording each piece ample evolution time.
Track one slides into view with steely tones that vibrate with chilling effect. Pulsing chords appear pretty quickly, coalescing into a solidly driving melody that exhibits crystalline promise. The cycles are laced with engaging diversions, aiding the tune in its astral spiral. Sparkling tones emerge with gusto amid the rhythmic keys. The mix enters a denser stretch, as if plunging into a dark and echoing tunnel. Things continue with a sense of building urgency, ricocheting off the close walls and producing complex patterns in the sonic confines. Dominant riffs persist in conquering fresh space, capturing the listener's attention with dazed results...until the song peters out, having literally exhausted itself with its frenzied velocity.
The next track pursues a similarly heightened pace. Building from a sedate opening, rapid chords surface and entwine to achieve a breathless presence haunted by high-end tonalities. As the basic frenzy progressed, auxiliary entries increase the music's density. Each additional sequence fits nicely into the mix, gradually producing a dazzling nest of insistent riffs that race along unmindful of fatigue. This time, there's an extended ambient outro, acting as a cure-all for the piece's relentless expenditure.
The last track begins with a celestial expansion that swiftly dives into darker terrain. The pace is just as exhausting as the previous compositions. Frankly, it amazing how this music manages to maintain its level of frenetic energy without percussives (although as this piece continues, e-perc does finally appear, adding to the overall alacrity). The dynamic riffs are remarkably nimble-fingered and seem unhindered by time or space, striving forward with inhuman verve. When the delirium finally abates, the restive coda is tinged with heavenly airs that properly soothe the exhausted listener with a calming return to the normal pace of life.
Definitely one of the fastest and most urgent releases to come along in a long time.
GERT EMMENS: The Tale of the Warlock (CD on Groove Unlimited)
This release from 2006 offers 79 minutes of gripping electronic music.
As one might expect from this CD's title, these melodies possesses a mystical flavor. The electronics are eerie and celestial. Pulsations evoke a glimmering feeling as they swim in pools of vibrantly dramatic sequencing. Complex riffs are generated on nimble-fingered keyboards, belting out with relentless determination. Once created, cycles swoop and loop with carefree abandon, evolving with each successive turn and swelling to majestic structures of engaging appeal. Heavenly textures descend to melt with the dynamic flow. A powerful bevy of sounds are given epic proportions, so that each song throbs with magical charm. The melodies display a regal demeanor despite their earthy character. Compelling passages radiate with shrill verve as the keyboards create lavish patterns that cavort and spiral and collide.
The tunes flow with bouncy vigor. Rhythms are often generated by surging electronics instead of impact beats, bestowing the tempos with a slippery disposition. Conventional e-perc is employed too, providing demonstrative locomotion and tasty urgency to the grand tunes.
The compositions evoke a mythical air riddled with epic conflicts and grand castles of ancient construction. No elves or pixies here, just mature fantasy as the warlock's tale unfolds. Romance is threatened, and battles must be fought to win the maiden's life. Wizards duel over barren landscapes, the atmosphere shimmering with their cast spells. The resultant sense of wonder is contagious and thoroughly satisfying.
KLANGWELT: Xoio (CD on Spheric Music)
This release from 2006 offers 76 minutes of pleasant electronic music.
Klangwelt is Gerald Arend.
Delicate notes swim in a sea of darker electronics, pulsating with icy disposition amid the shadowy textures. The result is one of optimistic light glimmering in a nocturnal void, a melodic promise emerging from a realm of conventional mundanity. The electronics exhibit a bouncy vigor that is pleasant and engaging. Some of the sounds possess a buzzing edge to their resonance, bestowing a subliminal vibration to the harmonics.
Complex keyboards provide undulating auxiliary melodics that stream through the compositions, adding engaging depth. An air of a futuristic carnival is accomplished, replete with robotic exhibits and twinkling amusement rides that dip in and out of interdimensional realms.
Some of the pieces adopt a more pensive disposition, conveying introspection through smooth atmospherics and sedate riffs designed to pacify the audience, providing a rest stop before the tuneage resumes its customary ebullient delivery.
A rhythmic presence flows in tandem with the harmonic elements generating a soft undercurrent of lively tempos surrounded by fanciful chords and fluid textures. The percussives are synthetic, but display no mechanical mien, hopping along with a congenial manner as they inject discriminating pep to the tuneage.
After this rollercoaster voyage of peppy highs and contemplative valleys, the CD concludes with a moody piece that blends harpsichord with growling diodes.
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