“Wellenfeld returns to their old style here with a powerful album which mixes a solid E.Rock to intelligent danceable beats in a cosmic setting”
1 Analog Tape 6:13 2 Ring Modular 7:03 3 Vintage Attack 6:44 4 Human Elements 6:17 5 Timeless Gravitation 8:53 6 Noize Modular 8:26 7 Dark Sphere 6:36 8 Black Out 5:15 9 Sine Wave Machine 5:08 10 Day of Silence 5:41 11 Time Traveller 5:19 MellowJet | CDr-wf1501
(CD-r/DDL 71:35) (V.F) (E.Rock melodious and cosmic moods)
A thick cloud of cosmic and of violin breezes floating on pulsatory boom-boom and sequences which dance lightly all around the compulsive bludgeoning of the bass percussions/pulsations, Analog Tape makes our eardrums quivering with a lively and heavy rhythm decorated with more melodious sequences of which the singings croon through cosmic elements. The rhythm takes a break, giving so the chance to our ears to hear a little more this range of cosmic tones, before taking back this rhythmic road which will make buzz our hearing. Heavy rhythms, pulsatory and resonant basses that accept nice catchy melodies in rather cosmic ambiences, the music of Wellenfeld has not aged since The Big Bang, the last opus I heard from them in 2011. I had certainly heard bits of Pandemic in 2013, and I had found that Detlef Dominiczak and Andreas Braun gave a solid orchestral direction to their music. It's pretty much the opposite here. With a solid blend of ERM (Electronic Rock Music) and IDM, Wellenfeld is more determined than ever to walk in the paths of Pyramid Peak.
Our quest to the discovery of the small jewels in ELEMENTS goes on with Ring Modular. This time, Wellenfeld leads us towards its sumptuous electronic ballads with a good morphic down-tempo filled up with cosmic effects and adorned with these sequences, as hypnotic as harmonious, which switch roles in discreet corridors where a beautiful piano lies down the mirages of its solitude. And what would be a good ballad without effects and orchestrations that rip the heart, the soul? Ring Modular proposes this with beautiful impetus of intensity. It's a nice cosmic ballad in the purest tradition of the New Berlin School style. The same goes for Vintage Attack which seduces with its numerous strands of sequences that spin all around and through a slow and pulsatory rhythm. The effect of dense orchestrations that wraps and slows down the rhythm in our ear, as well as these futuristic Vangelis synth layers, are good effects of seduction. The melody is also of a very intuitive kind. The swirling sequences which awake the frail ambiences of Human Elements propel the rhythm towards a kind of trance ideal for a hot and humid dance floor. The sequences hiccup and cackle, so giving all the latitude to the technoïd percussions and to the funky bass line to catch up this structure of rhythm which makes burst out this Trance dance a little after the 3rd minute.
Timeless Gravitation is more ambiospherical. And like each track of ELEMENTS possesses enough minutes to the meter in order to modify either their path or their intensity, the music brings its good orchestrations and its layers of voices, hardly perceptible, towards a very lunar slow dance-tempo. I hear Software here. Noize Modular is as much creative and ear-catching as Analog Tape. The meshing of sequences, percussions and bass pulsations, one of the key elements in ELEMENTS, is however clearly more elaborated here. It's one of the best tracks in this Wellenfeld's last album. But the palm of the best track goes doubtless to Dark Sphere. The envelope is sewn of mystery and of nebulosity with a good movement of crystal-clear tones sequences, as well as the sequenced chirpings, which encircles an exciting rhythm. A slow rhythm which at times gives the impression of taking the shape of a techno-lunar phase. The ambiences here are very nice and the intertwining, both rhythmic and harmonic, of the sequences are constantly changing its rhythmic progression. A very strong title! Black-Out leads us into the corridors of dance music. Ditto for Sine Wave Machine which is definitely more furious. Day of Silence offers another heavy structure knotted around circular sequences which grab onto some strong bass pulsations and on percussions allied of metallic tsitt-tsitt. More IDM than Electronica, the track offers good harmonious elements which are not far from creating musical itches. Motivated by these voices of astronauts, that we hear in some places on this last opus of Wellenfeld, and arched on a mid-tempo wrapped up with suave orchestrations and layers of seraphic voices, the pulsatory rhythm of Time Traveller also hosts these structures of melodies drawn by arpeggios which hesitate to fall, preferring to flutter and to roam in the ambient air.
It's a track that is just at the image of ELEMENTS, another nice album of an EM that is as much melodious as the diversity of its structures of rhythms which seduce by this intelligent twinning of sequences, percussions, bass pulsations and bass lines which are in the purest tradition of Wellenfeld music.
Sylvain Lupari (November 7th, 2015) ***½**
Available at MellowJet Records
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