PAUL HASLINGER & CHRISTIAN WITTMAN – Mallarme
Inspired by what I gather to be a 19th century wordsmith by the name of Mallarme, the ex-Tangerine Dream and ex-Lightwave musicians have come up with three compositions lasting between 17 and 21 minutes featuring remarkably beautiful music.
“Un Coup De Des” opens with a slowly unfolding piano melody that kinda lulls you into a false sense of security, since you may be expecting it to lead into something more solid, but instead, it evolves into this electronic cosmic fogbank. Right up to the 13 minute point, layers of synths, wash over each other and it's all about texture, space and minimalism. Just over 13 minutes, the piano re-appears, but in a much darker setting as brief burts of drones come from below while the pianist is clearly not being paid by the note, with single chords allowed to rise up and slowly dissipate like smoke rings into a blue sky.
Thus takes you to the final 90 seconds whereupon this wondrous choral section appears briefly- and it ends.......only to move straight into “Jamais N'abolira” which, at almost the same length as the first piece, is.....well......another lengthy track of non-rhythmic, non-melodic, textural, spacey, cosmic electronic music. As you'd expect, time and motion move very slowly in this universe, as synth textures, layers and sonic explorations mover over, under and around each other, and it kinda comes across as a 21st century answer to Tangerine Dream's “Zeit”, only more minimal.
The final track, “Le Hasard”, is again, another 17+ minute exercise in cosmic textural music, only here there's a bit more of an edge, a lot more darkness and , in places, louder, as the two musicians continue their electronic voyage into the realms of the seemingly infinite deep electronic unknown.
Fair to say, if you got off on “Zeit”, you've got a fair chance of loving this – personally, I can't get enough of it – a work of greatness.
Andy G., Inkeys.
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