“One of the most beautiful albums I heard and a masterpiece of emotions growing in crescendo that will touch you from the first listening”
1 From the Next End 9:18 2 Broken Radio Echo 3:55 3 Singing Machine 6:55 4 After Midnight, They Speak 3:40 5 When the Worlds Collide 6:33 6 Dialogue with a River 10:06 7 Forgotten 3:15 8 Night Traffic City 9:53 9 Sombrero 5:45 10 Last Step in Vacuum 9:11 11 Until We Meet the Sky 5:01
12 Epilogue 5:15
(CD/DDL 78:52) (V.F.)
(Electronica, psybient)
Solar Fields is the musical project of Swedish synthesist and sound designer Magnus Birgersson. Since 2001, with the release of Reflective Frequencies, this musician has built a solid reputation, while increasing his number of fans, in the spheres of ambient and psychotronic EM. UNTIL WE MEET THE SKY is his latest creation. It's a strangely fascinating album that quietly sprang up during the 2011 Australian mini-tour. Ideas that took on a more musical form on a subsequent trip to the icy territories of Ireland. These two contrasts of the continents perfectly depict the universe of dissimilarity that surrounds this tenth opus of Solar Fields where sometimes apocalyptic atmospheres cross beautiful angelic melodies on movements nourished by free and unruly sequences that make their ominous shadows hover in a stigmatized universe of metallized waves. Iridescent waves that smother and encircle fragmented and isolated tempos, gnawed by melodious approaches as melancholic as meditative. We listen to this album as a long astral procession with phases that come and go in a crescendo and which are lost in noisy astral noises. Magnus Birgersson wanted to develop his little masterpiece in a single long track that he cut into 12 phases that fit into a cinematic setting where lunar rhythms and melodies are born and die from their ashes.
The influences of these two continents embrace each other with a filiform synthesized wave that envelops the silence. Dark oscillations re-emerge, nourishing the discrete pulsating circles of From the Next End which spin with the delicacy of the shadows among choruses and their whisperings of intergalactic paranoia murmuring in a fauna of white noises. A good down-tempo follows the weak oscillatory perception of an intro condemned by a thick fog. Spinning with a haunting lasciviousness, it gives a parallel life to From the Next End which receives the rhythmic offering by escaping a few limpid notes here and there, but without ever giving in to the slight possibility of exploding, even not for a moment. With its wandering piano notes in a mood of gloom, Broken Radio Echo takes a very melancholy approach. It's a bit like contemplating the ruins of a city that barely breathes under an acid rain. This movement of apocalyptic greyness continues beyond Singing Machine and its plaintive synth layers that overhang an intro sclerosed by an injection of carbonaceous fluids. It precedes a subtle crescendo that slices the atmosphere/rhythm debate with percussions/pulsations that resonate like a suave tribal vibe whose echo gets harmonize with a fusion of choruses and iridescent strata coiling up in a cloud of eclectic sounds. Murmurs, gas and mourning metal sounds cover the very dark and atonal After Midnight, They Speak with the stray piano notes of Broken Radio Echo that accompany the cracklings of another galaxy. Crackles that flow into the intro of When The Worlds Collide and its bass line whose muted ripples awaken layers of synth that adopt the same shapes. Kind of UFO tones that intoxicate and captivate our interest and plunge us into a tasty down-tempo whose hesitant rhythm is drowned in a bath of sounds from an arcade game. Stunning, the rhythm of When The Worlds Collide dithers between the sensuality of Massive Attack (Mezzanine) and that of Gary Numan's orgasm gobbling robots. Everything is eclectic and metallic, except the emotions that transgress the reason of a title with the appearance so cold but which hides so much emotivity. It's one of my big crush that takes refuge in the limpidity of the sparkling chords of Dialogue with a River and its delicate intro where the reflections of the sun on a river simulates a bed of arpeggios sparkling with the innocence of its purity. A big roaring cloud disturbs this tranquility, modifying the axis of serenity in Dialogue with a River which falls for a short and heavy spasmodic rhythm with curt percussions whose strikes bruise the auras of the ululating elves.
A slow prelude to the superb Night Traffic City, Forgotten continues this walk under the bridges of a city in ruins where we hear a wave rippling among the resonances of a multitude of hoops whose echo is lost in a wave of anonymous synth leading us to a brief undecided rhythm. And it's in its drizzle that the soft rhythm of Night Traffic City is waving by adopting the sweet pulsations, percussions and the fine melodious chords of a keyboard with hybrid tones. The melody is beautiful and catchy. The rhythm is poured into vaporous atmospheres with felted cymbals and this fusion of metallic percussions/pulsations that sound like radioactive gases. And the flow is of an oscillatory force of 3.5, 5 being the maximum of debility of trance for zombies. But there is always this ambivalence in the rhythms and the harmonic fluids that makes everything ephemeral, fragmented or constantly evolving. And this is the canvas of UNTIL WE MEET THE SKY. Magnus Birgersson uses every nook and every moment to create a diversion and give a new direction to each of his titles. Thus the rhythm of Night Traffic City goes under a long tunnel and loses its transmissions that it regains gradually with a powerful crescendo of angelic choirs, fluttering cymbals, heavy bass and dramatic synth lines. The whole thing clears up while the rhythmic structure adopts a new tangent, in conformity with the entire dimension of the bipolarity of rhythms and melodies which teem within the heart of this great album. It's a great track! Sombrero plunges us into very dark ambiances with its chords of piano and keyboard which resound in the oblivion, before making us startle by falling with strength in a rhythm as unexpected than sharp. The floating hoops of Last Step in Vacuum incite us to join Morpheus' arms. A delicate rhythm forges up through an angelic mist. Wooden percussions pierce the layer of celestial violins, awakening a tempo and its echo effects which is arching on good pulsatory percussions and is drawing the lines of a stunning futuristic melody which is lulling between 2 universes. Angelic choirs wrap this tempo, preventing any leak of this stunning crescendo as much deeply moving than disconcerting. Because what follows will remain engraved in your ears for a very long time. Last Step in Vacuum is the long and delicious harmonious prelude which gathers every available note to feed our emotions and make crack our soul in the heavy rhythm and the surreal melody of the title-track. If we haven't the shivers to the soul, if we don't force back a tear and if we don't switch off the candlestick of our torments by feeling the percussions hammering the beatings of our pulsations, and by hearing the spectres roaring of pain and desolation on the rhythm heavy, lascivious and so much harmonic of Until We Meet the Sky which crumbles beneath the weight of heart-rending streaks, it’s because that we already are in the Sky. Moreover, the winds of ether and metal which blow in Epilogue are there to remind it to us.
UNTIL WE MEET THE SKY is a masterpiece of emotions growing in crescendo that will touch you from the first listening and so on. Perplex and meditative, Solar Fields weaves an incredible futuristic cinematic themes where tones explode from everywhere, surrounding rhythms and ambiances prisoners of a fascinating poetry coming from a parallel universe. The one of Blade Runner. The pieces of melodies that roam here and there, hanging on to rhythms which born and fade in moods of apocalyptic ruins, are the equivalent of the works of a poet in search of light. It's another jewel from the Lyon label Ultimae Records ; a label that doesn't stop amazing me, both by the quality of its works and by their artistic contents. This label found the means to merge the electronic art. To merge the ambient and techno by presenting cataclysmic works which jostle the current of EM. Exactly like UNTIL WE MEET THE SKY which jostles all structures with a remarkable work that lets breathe a new kind of ambient life. Hat to you Magnus!
Sylvain Lupari (February 25th, 2012) *****
Available from now on on Solar Fields Bandcamp
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