“...since Thrust Avis is not what I call an inviting first album”
1 Thrust Avis 13:59
2 Blue Biotop 6:55
3 Nightzone 13:35
4 Earthview 4:02
5 Jet Pilot 10:18
6 Butterflies Dance 4:25
7 Spacetrack 10:56
8 Cosmonautic Dream 4:50
(CD-r/DDL 68:51) (V.F.)
(New Berlin School, Prog EM)
My first contact with Erik Seifert and thisTHRUST AVIS had left me cold. It's by listening to A Trip to Nebula Cluster and Aotearoa that I let myself be tempted again. A temptation crowned of surprises.
Musical waves fall and coo gently, forming the sequenced melody of an ambient rhythm that sticks to a Patrick O'Hearn-like bass line. Flirting with an esoteric mood, the long title-track moves forward in an evolving envelope with keyboard chords hesitating to form a sustained melodic ritornello. Sitar chords cast Indian scents while long woosshh add a sibylline zest. Keyboard chords spin like a hypnotic merry-go-round, while the first melody line sees a double running away and emitting prismatic tinkles. The tinkles flicker on and on, and a series of riffs appear a little after the 4-minute mark. Despite this sonic mishmash, everything flows in symbiosis. Stationary, the universe of Thrust Avis is filled with echoes and shadows of everything that is born, moves and lives in this track where a vague cosmic mood is not too much. The rhythm bursts around the 5th minute with organic chords that compete with the riffs when Thrust Avis exploits a quiet rhythmic figure that finds more bite as soon as the track crosses the halfway mark. In the end, it's nice little track that requires more than a listen where the keyboard dominates the synth fantasies. Blue Biotop offers a nice lunar melody à la Software with sequenced arpeggios whose pattern zigzags under the caresses of a melancholic synth. Nightzone offers a two-minute of dark ambiences before a rhythmic movement, going from front to back, structures an electronic cha-cha. Percussive effects, sounding like knocks on wood, add interest with the jolts that have already awakened a good bass-pulse. There's a lot of Ron Boots in the development of Nightzone, which goes off on a more electronic rock tangent with the arrival of percussions around the 6-minute mark. A movement of the sequencer releases a sequenced melody that crawls briskly through this structure that becomes more and more electronic, with a zest of experimentation, developing some good synth solos in its last third.
Earthview, as well as Butterflies Dance, are two beautiful melodious ballads that are hard to resist. Butterflies Dance will require more than one listen on the other hand, but the interest develops at the first's. With Jet Pilot, Erik Seifert shows that he is capable of making people dance, even if sometimes the music enters an atmospheric zone. The rhythms metamorphose during these phases with good percussions, a good bass line and a melodious synth-keyboard. It's not one of my best moments on the album, but I quite enjoyed it. There's some nice circular sequencer movement in the opening of Spacetrack. Well, I'm not fond of the voice samplings, but they are brief. On the other hand, I like the looping piano notes and the concordance with the percussions thrown in here to create and support a good rhythmic line that is continually enriched by the synth effects, also looped. The dramatic chords do the job too in a texture that even flirts with mystery in the middle of the track. It's a very good track that one refuses to leave of the ears, so much the sample of the sounds, the contrasts and the glares is as much richness as the percussions and these marbles that one hears tinkle here and there. A very big title in this THRUST AVIS. Cosmonautic Dream is undoubtedly a tribute track to Vangelis, so much the sounds of Soil Festivities are present on crystalline notes of a keyboard-piano that encloses a beautiful passive melody. The whistling synth is simply delightful here. Harmony, melody. Two words that constantly come back when we go through an Erik Seifert's CD.
In fact, the more I listen to his music, the more I like his style. He creates a minimalist mold and gradually surrounds it with ease and harmony. Without ever falling into the easy way, since THRUST AVIS is not what I call an inviting first album. There are no instant hits here! You can love a track like Earthview right away, but for the rest, it requires ear oil! But in the end, it's a very good cd that almost escaped my attention.
Sylvain Lupari (August 2nd, 2006) *****
Available at SynGate
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