“Transfer of my Affections is a strong album which unites to wonder both extremes of all electronic subgenres and old amnalog floating EM”
1 First Contact 4:39
2 Gates of Paradise 4:39
3 Transfer of My Affections 4:49
4 Butterflies 4:28
5 Shattered Hope 5:51
6 Reborn Beginning 5:53
7 Pleasant Hypertension 5:09
8 Horizontal Sensations 4:18
9 Floating Minds 6:14
10 Disrupted Communication 5:28
11 Closing Titles 3:55
(CD/DDL 55:23) (V.F.)
(Electronica)
That bangs, that booms, that rocks and unscrews heads out of shoulders! It's strong, heavy and powerful. The loudspeakers regurgitate sounds as if they wanted to give up the ghost by being dying endlessly. This is some kind of hard break-dance, psy IDM or some techno chewed on by the powerful flobs of a throbbing bass. And that starts hard. With First Contact! Already we hear this bass to make beat its monstrous notes in a cosmic sanctuary. At the beginning the rhythm is spheroidal. Dressed in an interstellar approach, it floats and spins on good percussions. Making hiccup its jolts like a kind of hip-hop or an astral down-tempo, it binds itself to a nice melodious approach of which the minimalist airs will sign some beautiful earworms which glide throughout this Frank Pels' 3rd sonic adventure on AD Music label. We float, even if it's heavy. Even if our loudspeakers suffer. The time freezes. And First Contact takes back its heavy slow rhythm. Pushed by some good implosions of bass lines and tickled by beautiful sequenced melodies, this rhythm becomes fury with percussions and stroboscopic sequences which burst and struggle all around the chords of snoring bass and of this quite fragile melody which refuses to give up the ghost. It's even heavier and it gets out of breath in a robotised finale which throws itself into the magnificent Gates of Paradise. And it's there that we fall for!
The musical itch is immediate with a so sweet melodious approach hammered by an electric piano which makes its melody swirl in the spheroidal effects of a synth and its vampiric melodious solos. These two very infantile melodies are in confrontation inside some heavy pulsations, jerky beatings and strange effects of noises which draw a freak and freaking sonic fauna. And a melody raises itself as an old memory of our childhood, haunting and chasing our eardrums many hours later in a structure of psychedelic rhythm that will make my neighbors seethe. And so TRANSFER OF MY AFFECTIONS unpacks its 11 music pieces of which the immoderations offer a musical bipolarity with a mixture of ambient and of heavy, floating by moments and very lively. There is of everything in each of the tracks of this last The Pels Syndicate's album. And Frank Pels wants that hard. He makes that resounding and hurting for our walls, our floors, our loudspeakers (which still pound minutes later) and finally our neighbors. But this symbiosis between psybient, dub, down-tempo, IDM/Techno and all of this electronica scene is finely weaved in a sound spectre simply staggering.
The title-track presents a kind of Halloween melody quite hampered which scatters its sound shivers like pearls forgotten in the mist of an orchestral structure tinted by threats. The approach is dreamlike, but of short-term. Rumbling chords divert this delicate melodious approach towards the agonies of a heavy rhythm well sat on the jolts of lively chords which sparkle in the howling of a heavy line of bass to the deafening effects. One would say a kind of hard break-dance wrapped of synth layers with perfumes and orchestrations as ethereal as the veils of cosmos which try with great difficulty to transpose this soft melody intimidated by so much heaviness. Butterflies follows with a heavy jerky stroboscopic structure which breathes at big knocks of bass of which the guttural moans persist around a soft melody floating in the tears of synths and of its dreamy solos. The melodies are rather similar around these rhythms as heavy as slow which make be startled TRANSFER OF MY AFFECTIONS. Thus, Shattered Hope offers a small minimalist melody which overflies a river of magma and its resonant larva which still breathes hardly without bursting nor scratching the serial notes of this other small and nice earworm. We are in the mouth of black and resonant ambient while Reborn Beginning proposes a beautiful psychedelic down-tempo decorated with a vampiric melody which sings and haunts on slow and heavy bass pulsations which spit humming lines in the jerks of synth pads soaked of mesmerizing perfumes of old organ. Pleasant Hypertension presents a rather ambient, even cosmic I should say, first part with massive bass and percussions explosions here and there and good orchestrations before that the rhythm, always very heavy and invigorating, flies away with a melody which flickers furiously in the strong currents of percussions, sequences and flobs of bass. This is some kind of energized ambient, just like the very bipolar Horizontal Sensations which offers in return a more lively structure of rhythm. Floating Minds has nothing of ambient, or floating. It's some big techno with powerful psychotronic effects and a beautiful ghost melody which breathes through a strong rhythmic tumult.
A little as Disrupted Communication and its structure broken here and there with brief respiratory arrests whereas Closing Titles breathes of delicacy with fine cosmic pearls which derive in the breezes of cosmos pierced by white noises and rocked by solos of synth as dreamy as nomadic. Still there, the rhythm wants to quieten down and always amazes with this energetic bipolarity which makes the charm of an album torn between the various phases of electronica and the surrounding areas of ambient and cosmic music to the strong influences of the analog years. Very good, even brilliant by moments! To have, even if one thinks of having the electronica genre in horror because Frank Pels makes a real tour de force by uniting so well both extremes.
Sylvain Lupari (May 12th, 2014) ***½**
Available at AD Music
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