Sons Of Viljems - Lithospheric Melodies
Every grace offers responsibility, burden, awareness and commitment. When, then, it is given by an artistic form that is out of the chorus, capable of taking on the faces of those who do not normally think of translating perceptions into sonic outposts, the whole thing confers, at least initially, unease and confusion.
The Old Scribe, on the other hand, in this impulse, in this will, in this abnegation and research feels immense happiness and empathy for these two musicians who, with the help of others, have created a place of migration, of mental perturbations, of earthquakes with a space of security.
It is a dancing on the waves of a magnetic laboratory of analysis, a continuous probe that brings together the seasons of existence, occupational pasts, syntheses and never exaggerations, to give shape to an ascending linguistic concept. Everything is grouped together in the intelligent, never didactic form of filtered encounters, of experiences with the message received and transformed into a fascinating painting that embraces epochs, genres and musical styles like a net leaning against the sky. Seven long walks through environments that welcome the benefit of perfectly known stratifications lined up one after the other without needing the song form, but not in order to deny the spirit and the need that this modality possesses and determines, but rather in order to structure the lengthening of the mental manoeuvring space, outside of a concept that would be decontextualised for these two poets.
The millimetric use of suggestion corroborates the marriage of bass and guitar, here amalgamated by the powerful ardour not to close oneself in the egoistic suggestion of a brief riff, of a pulse, but to make the starting point fertile like the stream that dreams of arriving in the arms of the sea. This is the only way to generate the expansion, the stretching out, the mental stretching to match the gaze of a message that does not need lyrics to be intuited. An effort is needed, but then the cinematic vision of this debut album will be an incredible mass of clouds in continuous emotion. It could be said that we are in the presence of a maniacal attention to detail: it would seem a compliment, yet it would be more pleasing to give space to the enormous qualities of harmonious fantasies that make our eyes new and dazed travellers of an unconscious that, it is worth repeating, always lives far from our attention. The notes are hybrid particles but full of warmth and willingness: their consequentiality is conscious, active in being an encounter that does not seek balance but content, in an impact that extrapolates the senses from their warmth. Elements of nu jazz are revealed, but they have the courtesy not to be prevaricating, to concede space not so much to other incursions, but rather to abandon their own satisfaction of belonging to flow into a surrounding that starts from the perceptual mountain to throw itself in the sea of the sense of smell. Rhythm in this resounding work is the cerebral condenser that celebrates ecstasy, not making our body a dancer: it opens the content and specifies it as clouds do in the sky, to give themselves courage before the immensity that surrounds them. Here, then, is the alternation of tribal forms, of precise patterns, of excursions that do not provoke lacerations and increases in the heartbeat: the slowness is that typical of the first post-rock wanderings, where the melodic lines did not desire structures that would weigh them down.
Pain, as a proposal of acceptance, is an integral part of a cautious universe, never rushed, to make reflections come true, where there are no delays, lacerations or unbearable gravity. Because, as a human peculiarity, this feeling is irrefutable: it appears not through moaning or shouting, choosing instead not to be abandoned by gravitating around the sun's slow, warm rays, which remove the suffocating humidity that such a cancer instead sustains. The disc is a bundle of smiling waves, daughters of studies and rarefactions, a pedestrian crossing of the senses. Only in one track (Silence) is there a vocal that seems to unseat the meaning of the word, to accompany its whispering in the water that carries these sound entities towards the magic that inebriates, while the bass and guitar live on an arpeggio and a pulse full of Nordic fascinations.
In the other six episodes, there are small but significant presences of vocals that become caresses within the need to unite the different propensities given by sexual genders: men and women in the square of a village without lights become a lamp post for attentive souls. In Liminal, there is a female singing voice, but its brevity gives one pause, while the timbre is decidedly sensual. And the fact that one can hear movements from the Middle East makes it all the more attractive and mysterious. The synth, organ, viola (a perfect hybrid between the violin and cello), saxophone, glockenspiel, and double bass are no longer instruments, but the actual sound arrangements that contemplate the initial sound of the bass and guitar to extend everything within an orchestral concept in which music is immersion and elevation. This explains the feeling that the electronics present are there to suggest this epic will and not to take away space: when the modern and the ancient meet (Liminal), one experiences a tumult of continuous surprises. The Nephew of Viljems is a delightful suite that embraces the spirituality of the places dear to Ryuichi Sakamoto, through a journey of notes over the limit of coexistence between sweetness and intuition, also donating Vini Reilly's sensitivity for how the six-string becomes a sensory lift, within the aggregation circuits of other instruments here holding the sceptre of the extradition of a metaphysical body.
The beauty of post-rock, conjugated with dream-pop petals, is manifested in the generous Lithospheric Patterns, which synthesises the scent of ancient pages that, passing from an orchestral do, find themselves within electronic garments, to highlight the total lack of exaggeration. When the guitar appears, the bass supports the beautiful combo of strength and delicacy. Something dark and sinister lives in these oceanic forms... The opening Lahar (forgive me if I don't follow the order of the setlist, but a sense exists, trust me), is an incandescent intro, where the strings throw stones that seem to come from prehistory: the tension, the fear, the discomfort of the environment here is piloted to see oneself through a mirror that makes it clear how every entrance is a mystery to be respected... After almost three minutes, the song melts away and turns into a floor where the combined notes and the vaulting of the colours of the guitar, like that of the bass, lead one to think that Michelangelo Antonioni would have gladly grabbed these atmospheres for his film The Red Desert...
With Morning Horn we are inside the elaborate softness, of delicate events that arouse curiosity, almost imperceptible phrasings of an exploratory vision that does not allow itself distractions, crescendoing like an overture that claims the light of intelligence that scrutinises without passing judgement. Dense, voluminous, fluctuating, the track becomes an oxygen tank that waters the molecules of thoughts...
With regard to the aforementioned Silence, one can add the feeling of how a jacket full of mood lifts contemplates the autumn and spring of our impetuses. The concluding Pulse-Resonance is the vessel in which all the work done so far longs for a place where the immensity of the eternal can be known, in a sacred game in which the Dead Can Dance of the nineties sowed examples, in order to head elsewhere. No, they are not comparable, but they do have the same programmed will to distribute funnels into which the instruments can pour their qualities, without dispersing a drop, while the saxophone gives the thrill of sweetness within a sea stirred by the wisely polluted and gloomy guitar.
A sublime way to end a study, to colour the temples with waves that do not demagnetise so easily...
Alex Dematteis
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