“Parsec is an album to possess for all those who feed of Klaus Schulze’s discography, from Cyborg to Mirage”
1 Urvent 8:46 2 L'au-revoir des Elements 11:49 3 Gienah 12:18 4 Andromede 20:20 5 Canopus 8:58 6 Alcyone 11:35 PWM-Distrib
(CD 73:52) (V.F.) (Vintage ambient EM)
The winds which roar and whistle are common. They fill intros and outros. When these winds get mixed into a magnetic storm and move in the form of reverberant torsades, we frown of enchantment. That begins pretty well. And then there is a synth pad which spreads a musicality of an old organ. Its sibyllin veil sneaks throughout those howling winds. And the meeting make spurt some sequenced ions which skip and rush within the shade of the winds which drag their prismic dusts. And there, we dream. We dream of Klaus Schulze and of his magnetic Mirage. The winds make also born some discreet solos, more musical, whose singings are getting lost in a superb series of sequences which goes up and goes down in astral spirals by following the curves of the fine modulations which dress Urvent of a dramatic nobility. What a way of starting an album! What a way also to introduce us into the universe full of paradoxes and of sudden developments that is the one of PARSEC. Paradoxes and sudden developments, because Kryfels explores every pattern of an EM out of the vintage years, splendidly sequenced as charmingly ambient and softly melodious as mysteriously nebulous. Kryfels is the last find of the French label Patch Work Music. And it is a whole find! Musician and photographer, Richard Raffaillac has as much the eye as fingers to weave moods that either shake the soul or torment it. This is, to my knowledge, his first album. An album which caresses the old coat of arms from an experimental Berlin School of the analog years with some intense and poignant sibylline synth pads, as well as comfortable and intriguing sound waves embalmed by ether which ride rhythms as lazy as those sweet analog modulations which transported us in the country of this blue smoked of the 70's.
L'au-revoir des Elements exploits this somber dramatic side of Urvent, a little as Canopus moreover, with organic pulsations which gurgle in a troop of winds to the abstruse aromas. The sweet modulations make all the charm. They crawl like souls on the back of the void, waltzing at times rather awkwardly with the dying winds and breezes of ether which blow the almost Mephistophelian vibes of a track of which one imagines easily going out of a cemetery on an evening of black moon. Ambient, very rich and especially very effective! With its clogs which click in winds and pound like a heart at rest, Gienah presents a figure of rhythm as abstract as static where the modulations of a discreet bass line are livelier than the pulsations of clogs. Tinted of its sibylline sonic lines, the synth fits closely to these wave motions and is whistling some dreamy cooings which eventually got lost in the shouts of agony of a sonic pattern slightly painted by the roarings of apocalyptic sirens. And if we thought of having been caught in the nets of the Schulzian reminiscences in Urvent, we did not hear this long symphony of synth pads which float with aromas of ether that is Andromede. We are in full Timewind period with these synth waves which drift such as a bank of astral mist in a cosmos stuffed by these intersidereal tones of the vintage years. It's hardly if they wave. And nevertheless the ambient rhythm feeds on these static impulses which propagate like eddies in a lake too small, while the musicality appears with underlying ambient hymns which float there and even hum some baroque airs. I found that long at the first listening. But once well settled between the shells of my earphones, I have totally succumbed to the dark charms of this vintage ambient symphony. After Canopus which, even if a little more ambient, plunges us into the moods of Urvent, with a more dramatic but so dark side, Alcyone propose a more delirious approach with sequences which stamp, like steps lost, in synth solos of which the twists are getting constantly soaked by this psychedelic drizzle which feeds the ambiences of this album. A little more and one would believe to hear a music piece lost in the works of Klaus Schulze's Blackdance or Picture Music.
To draw constantly a parallel between the pivotal ambient works of Klaus Schulze and this first album of Kryfels is not a kind of denial to Richard Raffaillac. There are artists who imitate and others who want to exploit fully these analog ambiences that time stole from us in its crazy race to stop its dial. And it's exactly the case here. Kryfels submerges literally the listener in a sonic bath with the pleasant perfumes of the psychedelic vintage years but with a vision to build, and rhythms and moods, of the contemporary years. We feel the influence of the analog works (Richard Raffaillac has built brick by brick this album from totally analog equipments) in a contemporary vision which makes a wonderful link between two times. PARSEC is an album to possess for all those who feed of Klaus Schulze's discography, from Cyborg to Mirage.
Sylvain Lupari (July 26th, 2014) *****
Available at PWM Distrib
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