| Artist: Parallel Worlds & Dave Bessell Album: Morphogenic Released: 30 October 2012 |  |
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The electronic music album Morphogenic (60'04") shares more with the soundtracks of John Carpenter than it does with Spacemusic's Berlin-School. Using an extended range of synthesizers, software and imaginatively processed guitar Parallel Worlds (a.k.a. Bakis Sirros) and Dave Bessell have realized a major work set in a minor key. This darkly beautiful CD of psychically dangerous doom laden sound spins eight sonic stories painted from a darker palette. Their works emerge into cold light, then burn with a hard jem-like flame. Fluttering rhythms echo and pulse, rising and falling in a soundstream of fat synth pads, throbbing basslines and strange digital distortions. Relieved of a commitment to brightness, with each surprising chord progression Sirros and Bessell step further and further into darkness - their icy synth strings rising off into the ether while rumbling off-kilter beats delve deeper into the subterrane. The hidden burden of this music becomes clear in the welcoming and lighter, more optimistic passage and its touch of melancholy and tragedy. But soon the measured movement of moaning tones again draws our attention along odd lines, patterns, sequences and modulations. Once noticing all the drama in Morphogenic it is hard to imagine the kind of casual intimacy more conventional musicians must share in a collaboration. Yet, performing as one Morphogenic is their shared reaction. This duo, as with all composers, seek to infect an audience. The question they ask us is not what do we listen to but what do we hear? What makes music great is not practice or study, but courage. Bakis Sirros and Dave Bessell make the world vibrate - in strange and wonderful ways.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 17 October 2012 | |
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