Ethereal (FR)

Since reappearing on the music scene eight years ago, Arovane has chosen to operate in a broad spectrum, well beyond the IDM electronica trend he was fond of at the turn of the century, when it was the prime time of City Center Offices. Works on n5MD, collaborations with Porya Hatami or Darren McClure, thus testify to this broader palette than before. New stage of this journey with its arrival on 12k to deliver an album fully in line with the editorial line of Taylor Deupree’s label: minimalist ambient, small notes with luminous consonances, fragmented loops and contained experiments.

A few crackles, waves of soft saturation or nicely rocking oscillations complete the materials used by Uwe Zahn, on an album devoid of rhythms and acting in a silky and worked minimalism, whether the titles are brief (the two minutes of Longt, for example ) or much longer (the title track and its seven minutes). The German’s compositions can also be tense in places, gaining thickness at the same time as a form of darkness and harshness of the subject (Sunter and his more emphatic notes).

Apart from this passage, it is therefore rather an ascetic format that the listener faces, but a format that is truly touching, even moving. In this respect, the slight tremor of the pads, the undulating nature of the textures and the somewhat colorful aspect of the melodic contributions make it possible to create a certain emotion, a feeling not necessarily linked to the work of Arovane until now. The future will tell if he continues in this vein, or if he returns to his old loves, but, in this hypothesis, the step aside will have been convincing.