Konrad Kucz – Litania

1 review for Konrad Kucz – Litania

1. 

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

   Written and recorded between 2005 and 2006, Vita Contemplativa Litania of the Polish synthesist Konrad Kucz is the very first album of Poland label.

   An ambient, dark and emotive opus which opens with an odd cosmico-monastery mass where a cosmic monk mutters an incantation propelled by sinuous ethereal waves. This galactic mass stops abruptly! And the intro continues, wrapped of heavy layers whose fine oscillations increase the gradually emotive intensity. Muttered prayers, intermingled with heavy resounding layers furnish Litania/Intro, initiating a stunning galactico-pastoral journey in the heart of dark and medieval ambient with a fine cosmic aura.
   Vita Contemplativa Litania is a slow liturgy which oscillates between two universes on slow strata that move at the speed of cloister meditation. There are few movements. Only longs synthesized waves that float in suspension among fleeting choruses that murmur and espouse hardly audible dialects in a heavy atmosphere of sound cloister where only spirits seem to hold a right-of-way. Litania I is a succession of atonal loops which tangle up among placid sonorities and ecclesiastical elegies, whereas the resounding loops of Litania II are spreading like slow metalized elytrons. Fine arpeggios glean here and there with a delicate insistence, on a lineal movement that concludes with a dark organ which opens voices of a sidereal choral to the syncretic vocalizes.Adeptly mixing the austerity of medieval monasteries to a cosmic enquiry, Konrad Kucz weaves webs of a strange incantation to liturgical paradox on a succession of movements of unequal oscillations and Gregorian chants of a fragmented universe. Skilful, Kucz knows how to mould his ambiances by adding to it of fine lines of bass, enveloping and fugacious layers as well as isolated choruses, increasing gradually and continuously the intensity of its work to reach a superb paroxysm with a very musical and poetic final where everything fits together in order to conclude a piece of art both mystical, dark and constantly intriguing.
   I got to say that Vita Contemplativa Litania is not easy. It is a work torn between two ecclesiastical antipodes where the Renaissance seems to rebirths in cosmic spheres. It is necessary to listen attentively Vita Contemplativa Litania to appreciate all subtleties of this highly ambient work where the weak surges and sequences animate parsimoniously parts V, VII and VIII. But beyond the thin and short rhythms hide an astonishing intensity which climbs with hesitation among superb poetic layers (Litania VI and Litania X), in a fractionated universes where atmospheres as much cavernous as cosmico-tribal are in perpetual tugging.

   An astounding and astonishing work for fans of dark and syncretic ambient!

   2010. Sylvain Lupari / Guts Of Darkness