Ian Boddy – Chiasmata

1 review for Ian Boddy – Chiasmata

1. 

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

   Ian Boddy goes beyond the panoramic on his live album Chiasmata, a concert recording of his November 2003 performance at the planetarium of Leicester’s National Space Centre. The music on Chiasmata was created live beneath a night sky of spinning spheres, comet trails and intense stellar phenomenon, all projections on the dome of the planetarium. At such places, music and visuals combine to provide audiences with some of the most compelling space & music experiences possible.

   The concert opens with churning clouds of cosmic debris slowly settling into a sonorous expanse of atonal synth modulations and free-form galactic eruptions. These abstract aural expressions are an attempt to put into understandable form, the infinite scale and vastness of the universe. Boddy‘s personal sonic revelations are excellent (and as valid as any lecture or text attempting to define that which is infinite).
   Out of this weightlessness rises the track Ecliptic” (originally from the album Aurora). The piece’s fascination rests in its relaxed rather than robotic phrasing. Here Boddy draws on his roots in classic spacemusic while embracing the vernacular of ambient chill. Throughout the concert