Stephen Parsick – Cambrium

3 reviews for Stephen Parsick – Cambrium

1. 

   Matt Howarth / Sonic Curiosity – 2022-11-22

   This release from 2009 offers 79 minutes of cerebral electronic music recorded live at Bochum Planetarium, Germany, on December 13, 2008.

   The astral textures employed in this music are designed to create the impression of the audiences displacement in time, transporting the listeners back through prehistoric ages where they are exposed to hordes of blooping diodes marking the evolution of micro-organisms.The atmospherics possess an eerie, vaporous demeanor. While maintaining a constant presence throughout the concert, these cosmic airs undergo substantial evolution of their own, swelling to evoke celestial importance and focusing to draw attention to microscopic events.
   The bloopings are all generated by an Arp synthesizer, lending the strangeness an earthy character. These sounds are entrancing in their vivacious diversity. They run the gamut from staccato gurglings to undulant stellar winds.Rhythmic evolve from the sinuous arrangement adopted by the blooping noises. As the music progresses, these pulsating tempos achieve a lavish series of helixes that produces engaging melodies as they swim through the gaseous tonal foundation.One is witness to the genesis of basic life-forms. Amino acids coalesce and form bonds with each other, producing single-celled organisms that gradually mutate and develop methods to refuel themselves. Habits are gestated, simplistic though they are, bewitching nonetheless in their awesome implications.Wandering from ambient passages to outbursts of electronic activity, this tuneage is a moving experience.

   According to the liner notes, this music was inspired by Parsicks fascination with an earth time scale” encountered in Bielefelds Arboretum.

   2009. Matt Howarth / Sonic Curiosity“

2. 

   Bob Rusche / KINK FM – 2022-11-22

   Stephen Parsick is a busy man. Apart from his solo career he is also a member of [ramp]. Debuting in 1998 (as RAMP) with Nodular (444 Oscillators) they obtained themselves a place between the so called Berliner Schule (Berlin School) sound. Cosmic space sounds with sequencers, a bit like the old Tangerine Dream. Together with Frank Makowski [ramp] made a couple of excellent albums where one could hear the evolution to a more and more darker sound, and the invention of the term Doombient. Makowski and Parsick split up, and Parsick took the name [ramp] with him.
   Solo became Parsick more active and produced a string of cds and cdrs. One of these solo albums was Hoellenengel, which in sound was some sort of combination between Vangelis and Lustmord. The cdrs were all deep and dark ambient, or doombient..and most in a limited edition of just 25 copies.

   And now 2 new cds saw the light of day, one new [ramp] (Debris) and a new solo disc called Cambrium; Music For Protozoa. I picked the solo album for this review, but the fact remains that both albums are the work of Stephen solo. And this work is amazing. On Cambrium you will experience a journey through dark space. Actually its a nice combination of the old [ramp] and the newer dark sound. And we are talking analogue here: the ARP 2600 synthesizers and sequencers, the Putney synth, various analogue processors, and some digital sampling systems. Occasionally the sound of a delicious sequencer , but its too dark and too slow to be Berlin School. Its the combination between these both worlds that makes it all so exciting here. Where most dark ambient acts make music from graves is this music from space and makes it one of the best electronic albums of the past year.

   Every electronics and space lover should have this album, this is space music as it should be; doombient. And mark the words in the booklet: Thanks for buying this album and even bigger thanks for not uploading it illegally on the internet.

   2010. Bob Rusche / KINK FM

3. 

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

   The least we can say is that Stephen Parsick is in a shady period where the atonal forms of a tetanized music seem to be far from its conceptual priorities. In the same stride as Debris, although less heavy and more atmospheric, Cambrium – Music For Protozoa is a more psychedelic than structured musical journey, depicting the microscopic universe which surrounds us on atonal movements mixed to heavy and full of life musical structures of a reverberant life. Recorded in concert on May 29th, 2009 at the University of Bielefeld for the annual night of sounds, this last realization of the German synthesist is a sound reflection of an effervescent microbiological world. A surprising musical journey where the microscopic life bubbles towards ARP 2600 and VCS-3, synths known for their warm tones to facets as astral as hallucinogenic.

   Emerging softly from meanders of a boiling life of metaphoric streaks, Proterozoikum floats in a spectral universe where choirs and caustic breaths flavor a micro organic life of strange luminous parasites who tie themselves to knot as sound jellyfishes. Strange laughter of ash blond witches emanate from this context where subjacent life reigns with color palettes proper to Stephen Parsick.
   The first stammerings of a world out of control appear on DNA Sequence opening. Spasmodic sequences which collide in a strange merged ballet to dance in a dislocated way such as marionettes that we imagine to be germs, or enzymes, which converge on some point of entry.
   An abstracted dance for a microbiological world which spreads its tones among structures so ambient, atonal and atmospheric as we hear on Ekectric Soup Kitchen, Amoeba, Medusa and Radiolaria and lively structures animated by sequential pulsating rhythm as on Tribolite who dances under somber stratas by an arrhythmic flow and the title track which merges on heavy reverberations, while the heavinesss and the reverberates roundnesss of Urge to Live are similar to the sound vividness of the last Ramp; Debris.

   Cerebral journey, abstract or sound exploration of an underlying life, Cambrium – Music For Protozoa presents us a Stephen Parsick in great shape who brings us where he wants to, either to the borders of a spiritual journey where the stellar merges marvelously to a sonorous world that only Parsick can define with a multitude of organic tones which can easily survive in both worlds.

   2009. Sylvain Lupari / Guts Of Darkness