Keller & Schonwalder & Broekhuis – Blue

2 reviews for Keller & Schonwalder & Broekhuis – Blue

1. 

   Phil Derby / Electroambient Space – 2022-11-22

   Mario Schnwlder knows that good company makes good music. A talented musician in his own right, he surrounds himself with other top-notch electronic artists, in various combinations. This particular musical collective has met before with solid results, but perhaps none quite as good as this one.
   Blue is three lengthy Berlin school tracks that are as cool as the color they represent, each a distinct, beautiful sonic painting.

   Blue One” is excellent throughout

2. 

   Sylvain Lupari / Guts Of Darkness – 2022-11-22

   Mario Schonwalder is one of the rare Berlin School EM style composers who continue to exploits these same minimalism structures pattern. With todays gears and exceptional acolytes in Bas Broekhuis on percussions and Detlev Keller on synths, Mario Schonwalder succeed in preserving these slow processions of repetitive chords which evolve among synthesized ethereal strata, emphasizing strikes of percussions and a romantic mellotron. Blue is the 2nd segment of theories of colors, as visualized and putted in music by the German trio. A color thats harmonizes with the fluidity and limpidity of this Broekhuis, Keller and Schonwalder 11th opus.

   Nervous, the first keys of Blue One roll on a great bass structure, warm and waving where, crystalline sequential arpeggios coil up in a total harmony. A progressive minimalism structure, this 1st portion of Blue is delicately shaken and hems in a ethereal ambiance with a magnificent mellotron which throws his wrapping romantic veil on tablas percussions, vestige of an Arabian world. This bluish aura moves quite gently under the skirts of a mellotron which divides its breaths between the bows of violin and cello, while murmuring a soft fluty sound to gentle harmonies. Its all in softness that the tempo livens up on hesitating sequences which tinkle on more weighted percussions and an even more skin-tight mellotron, transcending an unreal Arabic world. The rhythm sways of a beautiful clearness under a dense mellotron and percussions to always tribal aromas, caressing at the end, the so romantic musical universe of Schulze of Timewind and Mirage years. A magnificent Berlin School, hypnotic which binds itself with heaviness and crash to Blue Two and its eclectic sound ambiguous intro where percussions strike undisciplined measures under heavy synthesized layers.
   Little by little, Blue Two remolds its acrimonious tempo to shape a strange military pace with its rolling drums and its synth to distant blow of mermaids which hum melodious singings, giving the vague impression of an aquatic immersion. The underwater waves have an unusual backwash effect, molding a wave motion which hangs to the singings of the charmers by fine strummed chords. This mesmerizing melody will survive the numerous rhythmic jerks of Blue Two, who is endowed of a rhythmic course of the most diversified; light movement of zombies trance, purely ethereal ambient passages where synths roar such as specters in the twilights and ambient passages to hiccupping sequences. Varied paces for such a complex title, but which keeps its beauty towards this cyclic melody which marries a sound variance more than enchanter.
   If Blue Two enjoyed a colorful rhythmic structure, Blue and Red shows a constant rhythmic evolution. Atmospheric opening perturbed by diverse colorful tones, Blue and Red fits the contrast of its colors. At around the 6th minute point, the tempo opens with a beautiful Hawaiian approach to sink into a beautiful bass structure, drowned by multiple synthesized layers which wrap and fly over a soft moderate rhythm. Hopping sequences on synths to mermaids breaths, Blue and Red makes a beautiful transition between two colors to paradoxes of tranquility, quite as its progress which goes from warmth ambient to balanced rhythm to end on a good hopping sequence and banging percussions that even the soft mellotron to cello tones does not manage to conceal the latent fury.

   Even if we know what to expect from Broekhuis, Keller and Schonwalder, the trio continues to amaze in a musical universe still very near the old roots of Berlin School. Hypnotic and mesmerizing, Blue is the proof that good old Berlin School has still some originality to offers and which it is far from being in the forgetting of the temporal cupboards. Some good old Berlin School dressed by the nowadays technology which preserves this warm approach of the hypnotic and compelling rhythms, as well as the atmospheric ambiances on permutated sequences to hatched jolts, with a touch of aggressiveness which the trio rarely exploits, letting glimpse beautiful sequential possibilities on Red.

   2010. Sylvain Lupari / Guts Of Darkness