I know a review about any project shouldn't be about the reviewer, yet I'll start with a little thing about me which might explain the choice of words on this release. So here it comes (no pun intended): I have a hate/hate relationship with blowing instruments of any kind. It took me ages to make peace with the sax that Bowie uses (and yes, I am a Bowie fan); the darkness of Chet Baker and the really slow and old bluesy jazz only got to me when I was in my late 40s...
So why the hell would Vital Weekly Main Office send me this CD to review? Because it is THAT good. In the first five minutes of this album, you can still hear some untreated sounds of the devices performed by Marcel Klingeler, but Frans and Martijn start generating surrealistic layer upon layer and create gorgeous soundscapes. Wooshing and swooshing like the best Schulze albums (without the constant arpeggiators), hypnotizing environments like The Anti Group Communication's Burning Water, treating trumpets into almost formant and vocal synthesis territory. And that is only the first track with the title "Those Silences That Occur" (where they actually don't).
The second track - 'And There Is Nothing To Say', - is about the same length as the first but has an entirely different approach. Maybe the result of Martijn and Frans switching the collaboration? Or, is it a collaboration at all? Or did one of them track A and the other track B? Because in that case I think the second track has more Frans then Martijn; It's all a bit more 'uncomfortable' or eerie, partially because of a lofi vibe that is hidden in the droney layers. Erratic tones are playing with the delays and a melody which is no melody suddenly seems to be part of the composition. Shivers down my spine because I get a flashback from the hospital scene out of Lucio Fulci's 'The Beyond', and from that moment on the composition only evolves into something even more unearthly, uneasy, with words unspoken ... *IS* there nothing to say? Or are the words merely unspoken and is it all about the absence of words ... And in that case, why am I trying to verbalize my emotions?
The A5 booklet that comes with the CD (designed by Bas Mantel, also available separately) has loads of images but the middle two pages are reserved for words. Incoherent - so it seems - phrases, but they're there, so probably they have a reason ... But while going through the sentences and listening to that second track I read "A kind of orchestral, resonating unity, not the unity of logical discourse". And now that sentence is resonating in my brain. This is one beautiful release.
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