David Wright & Ian Boddy – Shifting sands

3 reviews for David Wright & Ian Boddy – Shifting sands

1. 

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

   A collaboration between two icons of the English EM owed give more than interesting results. In fact, the expectations were very high in respect of an alliance between these two creative paradoxes that are David Wright, who is more melodious and extrovert, and Ian Boddy, who is more contemporary and introvert. It results from it an album which is exactly the meeting point between two musicians with so different approaches but which are always in search of musical excellence.

   A little as if we where at Pink Floyd doors (Wish you Where Here and A Momentary Lapse of Reason areas), Halcyons intro floats beneath an absent-minded synth, which is a sort of prelude to beautiful strata of a great solitary e-guitar synth. We are deeply into David Wright and Code Indigos musical world, assorted by the soft romantic Callistos touch, when the movement livens up slightly under fine pulsations flavored by cymbals and smoother synthesized layers. Hypnotic and bewitching, Halcyon cadences with good robotics percussions which strike a heavy measure, while the guitar recaptures its poetic flights.
   Bumpy, but symmetric pulsations, adorned by tinkled agreements so slightly animated, Still Motion moves in a static atmosphere where felted and metallic percussions measure a progressive pace below a hesitating keyboard. A keyboard which dives into an ambient universe where piano notes get lost in an astral cosmos filled of superb synthesized pads, before the title blows up again of an even heavier tempo. A hammering cadence, nervously groovy, which moves like a zombie dance, beneath cracking percussions and strange chords of a cosmic guitar with a bizarrely bluesy approach.
   When I say that the Boddy / Wright union is synonymic of strangeness and challenging, Still Motion is a striking example. An audacious and strangely bewitching title, which cogitates between different atmospheres and rhythms.
   A little as the title track which stirs nervously under riffs of a metallic guitar and a synth to spectral breaths, Shifting Sands increases gradually its tempo, following its nervous chords which find refuge in echotic waves. The rhythmic structure is hatched, wriggling and becomes magnificently harmonious with its loops in echo which overhang a jazzy approach, especially towards finale and its big bongos percussions. An audacious title which reveals Boddy influences and which constantly slides under rippling synthesized strata. Superb is all I have to say.
   After a strummed intro which unfolds beneath a sky surrounded of streak and mellotronned choirs, Endless Terrain diverges towards slightly bumpy structures, echotic and nervous which surround those all around Shifting Sands. Here the rhythm is more varied and the work of the percussions very ingenious. It hammers a structure in constant permutation which is molding the various rhythmic approaches with a touch of contemporaneousness appropriate to Ian Boddy. I like this hatched structure which hiccoughs and furrows these scattered percussions and assorted rhythmic elements which pass from soft techno to a jazzier mood.
   A weighty sequencer with hyper ventilated oscillations opens the first beatings of Comet that encloses Shifting Sands with a short manic nervous and heavy track. Redshift on poppers, and even TD in Franke area, which oozes from a big progressive rock filled with synths to twisted and steroidal curls on a bass line to clean out ears, as well as of fine ingenuous percussions of which their discretions do not escape attentive ears. A whole way of enclosing an album!

   Shifting Sands amply meets the expectations that such a fusion between two artists to opposite musical ideas can create. We find the poetic and melodious touch of David Wright to the boldness and progressive approach of Ian Boddy. A superb opus which transcends the paths of EM to get onto a more progressive and contemporary approach. One of 2009 top 5.

   2010. Sylvain Lupari / Guts Of Darkness

2. 

   Chuck van Zyl / STAR’S END – 2022-11-22

   Ian Boddy & David Wright, two of England’s most renowned Electronic Musicians, have at last combined forces. Their CD Shifting Sands (62’35) contains five elegant and energetic collaborative pieces. Meticulously arranged

3. 

   Roberto Vales / Ultima Fronteira – 2022-11-22

   Ian Boddy y David Wright, son sin lugar a dudas, dos de los nombres ms representativos de la msica electrnica que nos llega desde el Reino Unido, dos prolficos compositores con numerosas obras en solitario y en colaboracin con otros msicos y en esta ocasin, se han unido para crear este Shifting Sands”.

   En este trabajo nos encontramos con cuatro largos temas