| Artists: Ian Boddy & Bernhard Wöstheinrich Album: Hemispheres Released: January 2009 |   |
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The dreamy digitalia of Ian Boddy & Bernhard Wöstheinrich permeates Hemispheres (93'39"), their lushly imagined live recording from Germany's Bochum Planetarium. This work embraces many emotions, moods and colors as the duo reveals their instruments' vast potential. Exploring sound synthesis in all its possibilities Boddy and Wöstheinrich roam freely between musical abstractions and prog-rock inspired crowd-pleasers. In the former, sheets of sound build and renew to immensely pleasing effect while the more defined areas are strident and ethereal in turns. Most interesting are the passages that dwell in the middle ground, where all aspects of their music converge. Here full-throated synth leads tear across syncopated sequencer patterns and the sporadic thrum of electronic percussion. The two sets both clock in at around 45 minutes with beautiful amorphous soundscapes introducing and closing each. The sensation is less that of sound floating through the room than that of the audience floating in the sound. Music is in dire need of alternate worlds of possibility and Hemispheres delivers on this promise. It is a work imagining a "non-place" - where all the tracks are landmarks in a dream cartography drawn by Boddy and Wöstheinrich.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 4 March 2009 | |
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