“There are small pearls in this album whose moods, rhythms and harmonies should certainly appeal to fans of Redshift and Arc”
1 Tonal Painting 4 5:49 2 Utopia 6:35 3 Blacktime 4:22 4 Tonal Painting 1 3:23 5 Sea Dream 5:39 6 A Dream Whithin a Dream 5:48 7 Tonal Painting 2 4:48 8 Evening Rain 4:17 Lost In It – LII002
(Vinyl & DDL 40:44) (V.F.) (Analog E-Rock of the mid 90's)
It is known! Bakis Sirros is an innovative artist who likes to create his own ambiences. The Greek musician likes a rather experimental musical genre that can frighten shy ears but also raise the passions for fans of the genre. And if you are thinking of discovering his world, many pleasant surprises are within reach of any ears. Composed while in the cradle of his tonal research, TONAL PAINTINGS is a superb collection of short but very well-designed titles. From gray and black, to few subdued lights and ghost shadows, one must pay attention to the sound details in this album where analogous instruments bring out the immeasurably of a rich tonal flora which is as precious as these special effects in a scary movie.
And all this begins with the introduction of Tonal Painting 4. Weird noises, almost iconoclastic, torture its first 30 seconds. A nice Halloween-style ritornello invades our ears, while a bass sequence extends the weight of its dimension with its gloomy resonances that make up the décor of a juicy Mephistophelic atmosphere. Shadows stand out and form a kind of harmonic canon unique to these fragile melodies in glass arpeggios which turn and turn in their minimalist pattern. Playing with the nuances of his melody, Bakis Sirros touches our blood-sucking sensibility with spectral whistles that camouflage an addition of beauty to the rhythm by the presence of percussions. We are at the borders of John Carpenter and Mark Shreeve! Ditto for the waltz for black gnomes of Blacktime that remains anchored between the ears for a couple of minutes. If anyone also thinks of Legend of Tangerine Dream, he wouldn't be wrong! Dozens of small steps, both distracted and mischievous, run in all directions when the thumps of Utopia resonate on our walls. Woven as much in suspense as in psybient, the music is in suspension mode. A bit like in Tonal Painting 2, whose uncertain rhythm plays cat and mouse with our emotions in a bass sequence that goes back and forth in its synthesized spider-webs. Except that on Utopia, my imagination detects these bat laughs that remind me of a good Mark Shreeve title in Legion. Tonal Painting 1 is a title of black atmospheres with good layers that come and go, like the slow gurgling song of an Adam-apple, covering effects which glitter like dragonflies in a field of radioactivity. The title has a little more life than Sea Dream which is a real title of pure ambient elements. A Dream Whithin a Dream restores this climate of hypnosis brought by the circular melodies of Tonal Painting 4 and Blacktime. However everything is slower with a sonic sheet floating like a ghostly veil over an evasive melody that goes up in smoke as soon as our ears cherished it. And like the 7 other tracks of this album, Evening Rain deploys its colors with the same vision of its title.
Composed between 1995 and 1997, the music of TONAL PAINTINGS highlights all the talent of Parallel Worlds and of Bakis Sirros in particular. There are small pearls in this album whose moods, rhythms and harmonies should certainly appeal to fans of John Carpenter, Mark Shreeve, Redshift and Arc! Available on vinyl, limited edition of 250 albums, and in download.
Sylvain Lupari (October 31st, 2018) *****
Available at Electronique.it Records Bandcamp
Comments