ARC (IAN BODDY/MARK SHREEVE)
377816
CD
RADIO SPUTNIK
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RHYTHMIC (SYNTH)ARC comprises of two of the UK’s top synth musicians: Ian Boddy & Mark Shreeve. Many will know Mark Shreeve from either his solo albums on Centaur (‘Assassin’, ‘Legion’ & ‘Crashhead’) or his more recent Redshift project, but in this, his second collaboration with Ian Boddy, there is a distinct shifting sideways to the sound of a more ambient feel. 'Radio Sputnik' is a recording of a concert the duo played in Holland in 1998, and It includes live versions of 4 tracks from the fist ARC album ‘Octane’, as well as 4 new tracks, including the sequencer track to end all sequencer tracks 'Arc-Angel', where Shreeve wheels out the ‘Big Moog’ just to please fans of the ‘Berlin School’ Tangerine Dream sound. However, in the main, ARC is a project that allows the pair the freedom to improvise and experiment with sounds and textures not always associated with their individual solo works. The near 67-minute album features 8 musical improvisations that weave spectacular, spacey, rhythmic, atmospheric, full-sounding layers and textures, designed to demand the listener’s full attention. It’s got all the sound elements normally associated with the duo, but they have diversified quite a bit, and created something exciting and new. The music starts out with all the vital components required to keep a smooth electronic motor ticking-over quite nicely (choral Mellotron waves, swirling space synths and a hint of some melodies), but as it draws to a close, more of the heavy duty gear is brought on board (powerful bass rhythms and TD-styled sequencers) and it becomes a finely tuned, formula one style beast that has to work at maximum efficiency. In between that you pass through eerie atmospheric landscapes, with dense dark experimental effects and Mellotron strings/male choral voices that head the music toward musical meltdown. This is real killer of an album that is fundamentally unlike any of this duo’s individual recordings.
The opener, ‘Steam’, brings home how different this music is to what has gone before, starting with synth effects and samples, then a rumbling electronic bass rhythm enters alongside cascading electronic percussives. The two combine to form a sort of galloping rhythm over which an assortment of melodic synth leads improvise and weave spectacular little webs of sound around the soundstage, and the feel gets spacey, rhythmic, atmospheric and full-sounding – and all at the same time! Waves of choral Mellotron comes in and out of the mix at various stages, while further melody lines build and layer themselves over the solid rhythmic base to form an anthemic synthscape worthy of the best of them – A great eleven minutes to start of a great album! Space synth swooshes, ghostly sounds and dark experimental effects make up the most part of the two and a half minute ‘Transmit 1’, then the feel of the opener returns and extends into track 3, the title track, where floating string synth layers appear over a twittering percussive synth rhythm that runs over an echoed melodic lead synth that seems to be circling and soaring overhead. As they leave the atmospheric textures behind them, the two musicians proceed on once more using synth rhythms and Mellotron as their tools to create a mighty soundstage of rhythm, effects and melodies, like some kind of outer world builders creating a towering futuristic construction of architectural musical wonder, but here there’s a lot more sparseness and sense of vast space in the music than you might think. After a spacey intro to track 4:‘Who Walks Behind You’ becomes quite dark-wave in its cosmic scope, with a melodic section of Mellotron flute and piano coming through the dense fogbank of eerie sound textures to create a much more relaxed atmospheric feel. The final minute returns to John Carpenter style darkness, complete with horror noises and other general eeriness, then closes on the space music side of the fence. ‘Octane’ slowly builds from sparse rhythmic beginnings into one gorgeous thirteen minute slice of open flowing synth music, with rhythms coming to the fore, and several other gentle psychedelic synth leads flying alongside, and although this piece stays firmly in a kind of minimalistic territory, it is quite a sublime and addictive work. ‘Transmit 2’ starts with deep space cosmic textures and bursts of spiralling space synths, before the mood blossoms into a dark Mellotron choir fest where gothic male voices become the focal point in the music. It becomes darker and more industrial once again towards the close, then leads into the mighty 7th track: ‘Arc-Angel’, where, after a bubbling spacey intro of what sounds like something off of ‘Rubycon’ or ‘Phaedra’, a massive Tangerine Dream-like sequencer line appears out of nowhere and embarks on an orbital trip through the stratosphere, echoing the sounds of the electronic 70’s as it goes. Lone synth voices circle and spiral around and above the sequencer before it gets louder and more solid, taking off on its own as the emerging synthscape really begins to take shape, threatening to leave orbit as more synths, Mellotron strings and male choirs all go into positive meltdown - A simply magnificent track at close on thirteen minutes long! Track 8 is ‘Relay’, and it ends the album with a ten minute mix of spacey angelic voices, sequencer rhythms, flowing lead lines and more of that undulating rhythmic deep bass synth that is a common feature throughout this album, for this is music that possesses some of the finest most resonant synth bass undercurrents that you’re likely to hear any album of this genre. Overall, this is a fine example of how two great musicians can pull together, feeding off each other’s ideas, and end up producing a fantastic album that differs greatly from any of their individual recorded output.
Weight: 150.00 g
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