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Along with Marcel Engels and Ruud Heij, their album Spoon Forest (69'59") features the sonic interest of Terje Winther. This collaboration does lead the group into regions they may not have visited on their own. Charged with electricity, every aspect of their three sonic landscapes is in motion. From pastoral simplicity to overloaded modulations, vivid aural tints form a handsome contrast. These contemporary colors of tone reinforce each other's power and significance, while alien oscillations bloom and blossom into questions for the listener's mind. As a synthesizer hymn winds its further course, glittering effects entwine about the harmonies - all against a rapid path of echoing lead lines and a growing height of celestial choirs. Over the hushed motion of the ordered array of sequencer notes, a plaintive Mellotron flute grows to full melodic statement. In one long gathering of speed and power, a charge of strings command cosmic forces - only to be brought down to the speed of thought by a few expressive Rhodes electric piano notes. While Spoon Forest may stir deeply an intelligent few, its overt experimentation will leave the weaker among us grasping for meaning. Throughout this work of energy and emptiness we are asked to think for ourselves or (at the very least) just sit quietly and feel the scale of the music working on us. This release takes the listener on a journey with (and within) the three musicians. Spoon Forest conveys how deeply this outfit feels the essence of Spacemusic - harmonious and dissonant alike - and takes the music to a place where machines cannot go.
- Chuck van Zyl 5 April 2018 |
