“IDM mixes with ambient Berliner moods; this is indeed a strange mosaic of beats and ambiences loaded of comsic tones a la Jarre”
1 Extra-easy Listening 4:07 2 Zeemoshonawlpeace 25:48 3 À écouter sans Substance Particulière 6:38 4 Rien ne s'invente, tout s'hérite 8:41 5 Private String Utopia; 4:30 6 The end is nighT 17:52 7 Starfloor Anthology 12:21 Pie Jam Sun | PJS003CD
(CD/DDL 79:57) (V.F.) (IDM, ambient Berlin School loaded of French cosmic tones)
It's been a while since I heard new music from PJ Skyman. Yet the sympathetic French musician-synthesist had not given up on his plan to come back with a third album. And it was some 8 years later that he came back to us with a manufactured CD called PUBLIC GLASS WORLD EXTENDS BORDEL, a Java code language which means that our world is built on a disorderly basis. The album presents an EM which draws its influences between Jean-Michel Jarre cosmic ambiences, although The end is nighT does very Klaus Schulze of the Blackdance years, with a touch of very contemporary vibes, and Orbital on the edge of caressing the jerky beats of Underworld. Composed mainly between the years 2007, ie after the Walkers, simply we are adventure, (there is a certain correlation to be made between these two albums), and 2010; PGWEB was released for the first time in downloadable format in 2010. Pierre-Jean Asmus, the man behind P J Skyman, then undertook a real fundraising on the Internet in order to finance his project so that his 3rd album was produced in real manufactured CD. It had to be good for people to believe it ... and it's indeed good. At the very least, very creative!
And that begins in a rather attractive way with Extra-easy Listening. After an ambiospherical intro, loaded of very vampiric organ layers and inter space waves, an immense shadow of bass is crawling slyly. banister hypocritically. Its flabby body awakens jingles of cymbals and switches into unsteady pulsations before turning into constant and solid beats, guiding the ambiospherical wanderings of Extra-easy Listening towards a strong techno of which the boom-boom and tssitt-tssitt always remains dominated by the cosmic moods. Each track here is linked into an immense sound painting of 80 minutes which are subjugated by elements of cosmic psychedelism. Like the opening of Zeemoshonawlpeace which gradually sees its piano notes going out of its prison of interplanetary tones to run away with jingles. Little by little, a kind of Acid House structure shakes shyly these ambiences before Zeemoshonawlpeace dives back into its immense ambient-cosmic mosaic loaded of interstellar elements which sing and sparkle on a cloud of industrial pulsations. I think it's good....But some people will say that it's kind of very long! That depends on points of view. The idea of PJ Skyman is to make us float, to make us glide in space. And he succeeds. À écouter sans Substance Particulière hangs on to this ambiospherical etiquette with a music without beats and among which the arid winds and layers were conceived with a home-made synth box; the NE555Synth. Atonal but creative! Rien ne s'invente, tout s'hérite shakes a lot these moods with a heavy and very juicy technoïd rhythm, kind of Drum'n'Bass, where run agile and harmonious keyboard chords. This is IDM at its best with a lot of creativity, in particular at the level of the spirals of harmonies. Its finale of deep ambience sounds throws itself into the experimental brooks of Private String Utopia; which does very Pierre Henry with its fragments of ambient melodies which are liquefied in a dense floating shroud. We are at the doors of a very experimental ambient music here. The last minutes are stamped by technoïd boom-booms which carry the beat up until the first minutes of The end is nighT from which the hysterical rhythm will faint in ether perfumes of Klaus Schulze. Starfloor Anthology brings us to another level with a very French electronic sound (kind of Zanov) where an ambient intro, fed by a text on Vocodeur, dives towards a structure which mixes the synth-pop of the 80's to a down-tempo hammered by acidified percussions. The track mixes its phases of atmospheres and rhythm in a universe where Schulze and The Orb would have gone along very well. A pleasant path I would say where P J Skyman has certainly his place!
Sylvain Lupari (December 21st, 2015) ***½**
Available at PJ Skyman Music
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