Ian Boddy & Markus Reuter
Distant Ritual
 
Ltd Edition 1000 copies. Dense waves of swirling synth sounds break one after another on your mind. Relaxing the consciousness and yet intriguing it at the same time. Things then calm down somewhat and become quite eerie as we drift along for a few minutes. A slow, restrained melodic sequence develops, the drums are then introduced but these are very laid back.

A gorgeous electric guitar lead line makes an entrance but it settles deep in the mix rather than blistering over the top, absolutely beautiful. We move back to a state of drift but it isn’t long before the guitar comes back, adding colour rather than anything you could call a melody. A very faint sample of either a crowd or even a battle can just be made out underneath. This becomes more prominent as the music fades away but itself disappears as a sequence / drum loop made up of the most amazing sounds pulsates from the speakers. Soft synth pads underpin everything as the rhythm becomes subtly more strident . We get a short respite then the drum loops come back with even more of a kick than before.

The guitar cries out and the drum patterns seem to become more complex. The attention keeps bouncing from the rhythm to the guitar which compliments the music better than on just about any other synth album I can think of. It is played with great passion, never becoming heavy but instead just devastating in its subtlety. We return to drift but vast waves of sound soon come to shatter the tranquillity. Deep bass drones make the floor shake and all sorts of atmospherics are splashed over the top but things become much calmer as we near the end of the album and fade to a gentle finish.

There are seven tracks here but it is all really just one piece of music. Without the index points it would be very difficult to tell where one section started and another finished. (DL)

This page is part of a frame set. If you can't see the information strip to the left of the screen then click on the smd logo above.