The matter-of-fact list of devices used to make this extraordinary album - "drones and loops, zither and field recordings" - reveals nothing about the depth and mystery of the two, half-hour long pieces.Stating however as the artist does that it was "celebrated", rather than created, speaks volumes.
The first piece features a leitmotif so inherently beguiling that I feel sad and disappointed when it disappears. Happily, a few minutes into the second offering, it slowly reemerges. The entire album is redolent of old, musty wooden beams and fusty, book-lined rooms, as entire collections of ancient instruments appear to have been sampled and woven into this irresistibly captivating tapestry.
As an added temporal twist, the entire recording features its own,discreet background track of rainy, current-day street sounds, tires whishing by on wet pavement, a heavy, gusting wind casting raindrops at the window.
One of the most understated and yet most powerful of Alio Die´s many unforgettable works.
Posted by Stephen Fruitman / Sonomu.netTough to conceive someone who has insisted constantly in the use of acoustic instruments "electronic". Hard luck for Alio Die to have been invited into such a marginal "district". Anyway, when you come to terms that the "symphonic" sub-genre, has been kind of kidnapped by not exactly "symphonies", I suppose there was no place left for him to dwell. But he is no, and does not need to be, Tangerine Dream nor Yes!
A thread of droning like Hildegard Von Bingen's masses interwined with Vivaldi like figures, ethereal Indo like passages, with touches of Perotin's minimalism and a Bach's like SLOW counterpointing. Compressed into short individual songs, connected solely by the constant "reminders" of planet earth sounds, embedded in two long timed tracks. (30+ minutes)
A thrill to meditate on, listen to, or simply enjoy at a distance.
For audiophiles who appreciate the names mentioned above, or original slow-paced music.
(AdmireArt / progarchives.com)