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Looking back, the Kosmische Musik era really only lasted for just a few years. The proliferation of drum machines and other digital devices (along with the pursuit of monetary gains) so filled and ordered the then new textures and atmospheres of Space Music that this rare, highly cerebral art form soon succumbed to the notion that more technology will surely lead to greater truths. Fortunately for aficionados of the original 1970s masterworks our Brendan Pollard has not forgotten the first principles of this genre, and continues to seek something higher in each superbly constructed work. Filaments (61:47) celebrates the way of the Berlin-School tribe. Settle into this album's strange, spacey waves and notice the arrangement and the quality of its many expressive synthetic sounds. With no overlay of meaning, no illusion of enduring structure, his modulated effects rise and swirl above deep electronic tones and drones. Characterized by their potent timbre and evocation of a timeless realm the soundscapes swell fearlessly in layers of surreal emanations. In its most striking moments Filaments yields the dissonant hallucinatory disquiet to machine precision. Its motor motion of synthesizers superbly drives an insuppressible energy of the imagination. Surging into vast ecstatic exhilarations here Pollard brings a burning intensity to cooled Avant-Garde logic. As sequencer patterns expand, running headlong through our thoughts, Mellotron recollections summon a slowing symbolic sonic imagery of sleep. With analogue synth melodies depicting Pollard's turn of mind, in places Michael Daniel's electric guitar catches a distinctive uplift in energy. From the dark night of the soul, to the promise of a new day dawning, Filaments asks us to root through all the wires, circuits, plugs, switches and clutter of gear, to find something profound - something waiting and writhing in the delicate dimness of dreams.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 19 September 2024 |
