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Writer's pictureSylvain Lupari

SENSORY++: Art of Sadness (2017)

“Perfect!”

1 Turbulent Feelings 12:40 2 Melancholia 16:27 3 Just Breathe 8:55 4 Fading 7:52 5 Silent Tears 12:52 6 Final Thought 11:44 Wool-E Tapes | WED015

(CD/DDL 70:34) (VF) (Cosmic EM and Berlin School)

What a find my friends! But what a find! Layers of synth weaved in the fragrances of tearful voices and of and big sadness get in my ears as soon as the ambient and the very ethereal structure of Turbulent Feelings accosts the lobe of my ears. About 4 minutes farther, an astral door opens and lets in various forms of neurasthenic atmospheric elements, among which layers of voices which go straight into the knot of our emotions, whereas a delicate oscillatory movement of the sequencer frees a ghost rhythm trapped in a thick cloud of drones. An effect of backwash pushes back these ambiences which become more musical and less darkened, giving birth to synth lines which develop some long solos filled of nostalgia. Cosmic a la Jean-Michel Jarre or ambient a la Klaus Schulze, Turbulent Feelings derives between our ears with this peculiarity which makes of those touching and troubling works the vessels which reach the limits of our soul.There is definitively something going on at the level of EM in Belgium and the label Wool-E Discs is definitively there for something. This label which recently gave us hard-hitting works from BySenses, Owan and Galactic Underground does it again with another brilliant album from Sensory ++ this time, ART OF SADNESS. This 2nd opus from the Belgian musician Joost Egelie is one brilliant ode to sadness built on the bases of this electronic music which filled our ears of emotions in the beautiful vintage years.

Melancholia follows with dusts of stars which let themselves carrying by astral breezes. These waves which wrap my ears, as well as the effects of ambiences, awaken old memories where the quite new music of Jean-Michel Jarre struck my amazed ears. A keen oscillation pounds in this décor of floating waves, creating a circular rhythm which passes from an ear to the other. A pure delight! Both at the level of the ambiences and the effects, this introduction is a pure delight. Joost Egelie piles these layers stolen from time by adding some more of effects in this gigantic cosmic surrounding where now roam 4 small rotary sequences. The oscillations go from soft to aggressive while the synth makes to trumpet strange layers which metamorphose into worshippers' chants. Crumbling its some 17 minutes with a concern for the detail and for the precision of sounds, Melancholia stigmatizes its ambient rhythm while adding strata of intensity which make run our hairs of the back and the arms. Intense and astonishing, the piano of its finale still resounds in my ears! We are not at the end of our surprises with this splendid movement of the sequencer in Just Breathe where the rhythm skips as if it puts the end of its note in an ice-cold sound pond. This rhythm skips as a knot of sequences which comes undone to pursue a more coherent way with keys which skip with such a hypnotic delicacy in layers of mists and of voices inflated in ether. The sound and the vibes are simply top notch! Fading is an ambient title filled with sound effects which burst on synth lines floating in opalescent vapors. Notes of electric piano open the melancholic nap of Silent Tears. Layers of foggy violins are covering this quite small night dawn serenade which float between my two ears whereas flavors of a gloomy saxophone are blown from the fingertips of Joost Egelie. The harmonies are melancholic. A deep pulsation emanates between the dense multi- layers of synth which can contain this nostalgia painted by a synth which is courting it nevertheless with beautiful solos. The linear movement is transformed into another delicious structure of ambient rhythm which crosses my loudspeakers and covers the space of my listening room with a circular walking while the voices tear away from these ambiences to weave a seraphic choir. Because it should end, Final Thought restarts the meter of the sequenced rhythms in ART OF SADNESS to 0 in order to offer a meditative 12 minutes traced by winds, drones, layers of saddened voices and a mythical Mellotron. It's like to leave a enchanting universe where the sound aestheticism, the detail in tones and this intelligent balance between the hypnotic rhythms and the ambiences perfumed of tenderness and despair as well as this melancholic journey through ages make of ART OF SADNESS an inescapable opus for the fans of cosmic EM and Berlin School of the 70's. Great from A to Z! And the liner notes in the digipack artwork of this CD offered in original pressing of 300 exemplars explain even more in detail the motivations of Joost Egelie and the meaning of his last album.

Sylvain Lupari (April 2nd, 2018) *****

SynthSequences.com Available at Wool-E Discs Bandcamp

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