“This is a stunning album of dark cinematographic moods and it's utterly great”
1 Toene des Nebels 9:46 2 Fliegende Sequenzen 6:45 3 Weinender Mond 7:49 4 Der Singende Sinus 8:13 5 Sequenzerliebe 5:43 6 Sonnenstahl 7:04 7 Herbststurm 6:35 MellowJet Records | CD-r wv1401 (CD-r/DDL 51:57) (V.F.) (Dark ambient beats a la Düsseldorf School, New Berlin School)
A kind of hollow breeze is blowing its lugubrious perfumes whereas that hoarse pulsations widen its metallic brilliances by outstripped knocks. Toene des Nebels unfolds its dense mystic mist where our ears perceive with difficulty skeletons of sequences fraying and distorted clamors, while jingles resound like deformed synth lines which float while dropping the beginnings of a flabby structure of rhythm. It's a kind of Chill, maybe even a Groove, mixed in vapors of Hip-hop which little by little takes shape with a delicious bass line, beatings of more accentuated bass sequences and some vaporous gases which act like unfinished percussions. There you go! This is the main pattern of the rhythms which battle the cemetery fogs of TOENE DES NEBELS. Some rich synth lines weave the canvas of a glaucous ambiance with ghost shadows and effects of echo which float with a subtle orchestral perfume. Down from its 10 minutes, the title-track orchestrates its vaguely progressive structure of rhythm with sequences which oscillate slowly, as in a waltz for coma patients, allying their tones of metallic gurglings to percussions always so indistinct and sometimes gaseous while the synths decorate the atmospheres of a mist filled with industrial drizzle and with reverberations which wave with piercing shouts in their tones. Toene des Nebels sets the tone to an album as much appealing as unexpected. The noise of mists, the sound of fogs and the chants of the iridescent drizzle which lose their brightness in the glaucous atmospheres of cemeteries; here's of what is made this fascinating album where the structures of rhythms are totally dominated by the mortuary atmospheres of this album. Our spirit and our senses navigate in a hallucinating sound decoration where everything seems to us unreal, so much everything is blurred, as in our most famous nightmares, where we are plunged in the core of horror B-movies' ambiences.
It' quite a whole surprise that this album of WellenVorm, a project of Uwe Rottluff who is a musician synthésiste and especially a sculptor of sounds and atmospheres from Chemnitz, Germany, and who offers here an album which seems to be taken out of the fires of hell. TOENE DES NEBELS is going to turn you upside down at several levels. If it's not by the brilliant sequencing patterns, it will be by some incredible psychotronic outer-world moods. Like a real sound film-maker, WellenVorm proposes 8 stories in constantly evolving sounds, rhythms and ambiences which are small pearls of fear. We could thus rename this album into music for donjons. Both poles of EM, analog and digital, are in confrontation here with a rich sound texture where sequences and their wild capers are completely tamed by a wall of ambiences where the chants of the mists are accompanied by pleasant and very relevant orchestrations to make shiver those who listen to this album in the most opaque blackness. The psychedelic effects of the synths abound with imperfect hoops which make their echoes shining in mists and choirs as well psychotroniques than very sinister. They open Fliegende Sequenzen and gild its intro of a dense morphic veil. A thin line of sequences makes roll its keys in background, weaving a kind of rivulet which sparkles as the strings of a harp behind a heavy curtain of unstable sound shadows. Enormous vampiric waves spread their orchestral wings in a pattern of deep black ambiences where the rhythm reveals a structure in constant procrastination with sequences which sparkle in orgiastic black shadows and sudden orchestral jerks. Weinender Mond is livelier and more livened up than the title-track but offers a sound decoration just as much typical of the fright moods which fill the ambiences of this first album of WellenVorm on MellowJet Records. The sequences are fat, juicy and unfold waves of white noises in steady knockings. And the fog! Always so intense and apocalyptic as its curtains of worries which separate the living flesh from the zombies' appetite. We always stay in the theater of horror with Der Singende Sinus and its introduction to be made go pale Peter Vincent in the movie Fright Night. One fluid line of sequences extricates itself from these atmospheres, making unwind its keys which dance as skeletons of invertebrates of which the somber osseous spasms wind some clouds of mist which cover the gutters of cemeteries. A macabre melody comes then in order to make roll its notes towards half-time, increasing even more the dark ambiences of Der Singende Sinus. Some heavy sequences undo the metallic fogs of Sequenzerliebe to swirl heavily with residues of percussions in another pattern of sinister fog. The rhythm is ambient, even if the jumps of the keys are lively, while the moods are always tetanizing and iced of dread. I have the impression to dive back in my memory and downright into the subterranean graves of the movie Phantasm. Sonnenstahl proposes a slow introduction filled by chants of Trolls in agony which start to run by following the paces of heavy resonant sequences. It's a good track where the rhythm makes itself shyer while Herbststurm, by far the most powerful track of TOENE DES NEBELS, concludes this album with a steady, heavy and very kind of movie action rhythm of the medieval times when the Trolls were running away from the rebellion of huge archers. It's a whole sound pattern where the horror is in reach, so much in the ears as the imagination that they feed.
Very surprising for a first album, this TOENE DES NEBELS is a rendezvous for those who want to exploit at deep the infinite songs of mists which escape from ectoplasms. And there everything becomes possible, according to the limits of your imagination. One thing's for sure, if mists sang really in this way, I shall make picnics late in the evening near cemeteries. A very beautiful album. Audacious and creative, it's modeled on the infinite possibilities of EM toys and instruments, as analog as digital. I guess that's what people call a must! Well...I do.
Sylvain Lupari (September 30th, 2015) *****
Available at MellowJet Records
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