Description
- ALRAUNE
- CHIMAERA
- CONCHILIEN
- NIXEN
- PERLBOOT
- SALAMANDER
- VIPERN
Serge’s wonderfull release that is an Ambient Gem!. Sounds that will bring you into a temperd stayte of mind.
Serge Devadder – Taxon
€ 7,90 – € 10,90
Released: By Groove Unlimited
Additional information
| Weight | 105 g |
|---|---|
| Medium | CD, MP3, FLAC |
| Package | Jewel Case |
Sylvain Lupari –
The Belgian invasion invades more and more my musical tastes! This time it is with the music of Serge Devadder who goes by the Groove Unlimited label to offer us an amazing album that deserves our attention. Taxon is the sixth solo album of the Brussels’ musician and proposes a music influenced by works of arts of a particular character, zoology and the paintings of the German painter Birgit Schweimler who has already realized the covers of the Cambrian and Ganda albums as well as the one of Taxon. The works of the biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, the cabinet of curiosities from the Dutch zoologist and pharmacist Albertus Seba and finally of the American photographer Henry Horenstein and his illustrations of his book Aquatics are also the numbers of influences which helped to design the essences of this amazing album where our ears will discover a fascinating universe which is closely related to these influences.
It’s through a waltz of carillon that begins the exploration of Taxon. Tibetan bells weave their timbres collections in an ambient movement which looks like the gait of a pistorello wandering the main street of a new village in the Wild West. Synth layers cover this rather harmonic bells choir of Chimra” which sounds like a fusion of Robert Rich and Sensitive Chaos with a little of Loren Nerell’s lubricant to add a touch of drama to this ballad for a hundred bells under a sky to the colors of despair. There is a world of imagination and a lot of complexity behind the making of this music as well as on “Nixen” which is much in the same genre
Bert Strolenberg/SonicImmersion.org –
As for Serge Devadders previous cds, the cover of this release features an abstract texture by abstract art painter Birgit Schweimler that somehow reminded the composer of an amphibian organism, which fits perfectly with the concept of the album. Taxon, as its name suggests, is heavily influenced by Serge Devadders fascination for comparative biology and the act of taxonomic classification as an attempt to bring order to the chaos of evolutionary drift. Its ambient sonic narrative explores the dark, murky, cruel, slimy processes of biological differentiation while expressing the composers fascination for its complexity and versatility. Another source of inspiration was the famous cabinets of curiosities (the so-called Wunderkammern) of the baroque rulers which displayed a blend of early natural history collections with more bizarre artefacts. Thus, Serge decided to name each of the seven tracks on the album after an organism, either f r om real nature or from the realm of fantasy.
So whats the music like? Well, its a carefully moulded and shaped travelogue of tribal-organic electronics, moody textures and primordial alchemy matched with a few aquatic elements. Also note some distant horn calls merged with spatial sequences and deep spherics (Alraune) or gentle bursts of conch shell trumpet (the closing piece Conchilien). The sequencing found on the release is also something special, putting things in fascinating yet exciting pulsating motion (Vipern) while mesmerizing atmospheres materialize. And theres the fascinating track Perlboot (the German common name for the Nautilus pompilius) having a special meaning on the recording. The chambered nautilus-shell, with its many compartments, is a well-documented example of a near-golden spiral and almost a symbol of how mathematical principles drive growth and differentiation in biological processes. Hence Serge included a reference to the golden ratio Phi Fibonacci-series in this piece (which comes with a beautiful video on You Tube) as the number of pulses follows the series between 1 and 233. This actually reflects the increasing size of the air-chambers in the shell.
Taxons mesmerizing acoustic-infused, highly imaginative soundworlds are simply ear-candy as it paints its own sonic worlds of natural wonder. Check out this quality release if you like the organic ambient works Robert Rich, Loren Nerell and Steve Roach.4 stars out of 5
2019. Bert Strolenberg/SonicImmersion.org