FD.Project – Other side of and More

1 review for FD.Project – Other side of and More

1. 

   Sylvain Lupari – 2022-11-22

   Happiness is in music! It’s when I receive an album from an artist that I love as much as Frank Dorittke that I repeat this sentence to myself. And so, it is true.In an album that wants to be neither more nor less to be a sequel to The Other Side of FD Project … Quadea and The Other Side of FD Project … Nocturna, THE OTHER SIDE OF AND MORE offers a hybrid approach where a long river-track goes alongside 3 shorter ones with more rock dimensions, even technod. A music where the scents of Mike Oldfield always remain at the heart of its charms and make a very beautiful album that this synth-guitar duality so unique in the universe of FD Project always makes much more beautiful …

   And it begins with a polarizing wave and its undulating shadow in a murky universe where chthonian whispers lurk. Luminous streaks are added to this backdrop of shadows and of muddy tones, creating a sonic magma that winds up constantly widening th e gap between its beginning and its end. The movement is therefore slow with sounds of percussive echoes in a cave from where we can hear the movements of rattlesnakes’ tails. The echo of a sequence vibrates some 210 seconds farther. A minute later, that distant shadow of rhythm takes on a more lively form with the combat of a lone key and a bass-line of pulsations. Encrusted in a minimalist approach, the rhythm of The Other Side Of … Part 1 literally comes to life around the 6th minute. Playing cat and mouse in a more musical choreography, the sequencer and this line of bass-pulses form a hypnotizing rhythm under a first dark sky with a heaviness that sticks our shoulders to our ribs. But beware of you! Pay attention to the many enchanting traps that punctuate the 4 parts of this long title-track. The first one to take us by surprise is this series of percussive elements stolen from the tails of rattlesnakes which will quietly condition our cortex to hear these Gothic chains whi c h opened the doors of the immense underground gutters in this period when torture was the national sport of the barbarians. The ambiences around these effects take on a sinister appearance with moans drowned in distortion and prismatic chants as the fatal march of the monks who own these dungeons evolve from corridor to floor. In return, we feel a more reassuring vision with these clearings in the timbre of the voices and these radiant waves which guide us to these percussions which revive this quiet rhythm just before the 12th minute. This slightly more heightened flow takes place over a little 90 seconds before the 3rd form of The Other Side Of … Part 1 is taking its ease in Techno-rock for limp legs.

   The Other Side Of … Part 2 falls lifeless with a pack of breezes and dark woosshh so fused together they form a dense and compact tonal body with the possibility of progressing by implosions. The echo of a percussive sequence resounds in a layer of celestial voices which joined this slow movement, while other layers of percussion introduce the first riffs of a guitar. Everything remains ambient and everything remains frozen up until the 30th minute, where the sequencer activates a first draft of electronic rhythm to THE OTHER SIDE OF AND MORE A pulsing bass-line outbids for a more lively presence to which Frank Dorritke adds an organic effect that radiates even more under the guitar solos. The synth also puts its touch while remaining less convincing than the guitar whose incisive solos try to polish the fluidity of this spasmodic rhythm. And after the amplified silence of the void, The Other Side Of … Part 4 modifies this spasmodic structure to inject some clumsy keys into it in a rhythmic scheme which ogles the frontiers of Electronica. The dazed zigzags, which trace these lines of rhythms exceeding the 0.8 limit on the resonances of solid bass-sequence hits, are as charming as these fascinating solos of a guitar-synth fusion which gives a r e gurgitating talk-box effect in a too short lapse of time for all the charms of this last part of The Other Side Of …

   The desire to hear again this long segment of 47 minutes having become stronger than to hear the rest of the album, it’s thus with 2 or 3 listenings late compared to The Other Side Of … that I undertook this section that Frank D names And More A staccato effect enshrouded of electronic reverberations brings Polarlight out of its introductory limbo. A more lively rhythm emerges from the reverberating layers of a synth-accordion, giving birth to a rhythm structure la Edgar Froese’s Stuntman, Drunken Mozart in the Desert. A slight ringing is heard between the multiple cascades of the synth layers. It guides the now minimalist structure of Polarlight in a very Mike Oldfield’s vision where are floating many guitar solos unique to FD Project’s touch. And if we concentrate enough, we can even hear distant scents of Tubular Bells on Polarlight. A guitar that h as become more symbolic in this second part of FD’s new album. She pulls the best of the German musician in the very flamboyant Black Mirror, an aggressive techno with its dance floor vision and where the guitar multiplies its solos in another thought for Mike Oldfield. But not as much as on La Mmoire where the heavy and slow rhythm really breathes by Tubular Bells. As good as it’s beautiful! I would write that too in order to properly situate this last album by an artist who is still so very attractive …

   2021. Sylvain Lupari