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Across the mysterious heavens of the mind machines are singing to us. In another demonstration of how beautifully electricity may be rendered into music Jesper Pedersen has realized the album Katydids (61'23"). A masterstroke of pure creativity, musical technology and intent its veering, dissolving planes of sound compel us to contemplate where we are in a given space, and how our sensations alter as space changes shape around us. This music's weightless sonorities and blended timbres issue from a well-managed system of modular synthesizer components. Over the slow building ascent of each of its five tracks this brilliant follow-up to Three by 15 (2020) exerts a confident magnetic pull. Some sections emphasize energy, while further in Pedersen's potent forces recede, and are replaced by subdued aural environments. The two moods meld together, and in these fleeting moments we are unable to perceive between light and dark. In vivid tones giving way to paler, starker ones we find a fractured beauty resolving - and ultimately restoring a stable consonance. Thus Pedersen recaptures our attention, even as the listener is drifting into a serene hideaway of thought. In the way the various forms track, swerve, arc and bend, then concentrate and release into the shared space, Pedersen connects with a wider range of minds. Jumping, gliding and dashing through a mystical electronic realm Katydids irradiates rather than occupies the sound field. It is the kind of magic you will feel fortunate to have found and known.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 21 January 2021 |
