RAISON D'ETRE 
498362
CD
ENTHRALED BY THE WIND... (DARK & AMBIENT)

GOTHIC ELECTRONIC (INDUSTRIAL)

The final twenty-seven minutes of this album are totally breathtakingly beautiful, but all that goes before is also pretty damned engaging too. 7 mostly lengthy haunting industrial panoramic soundscapes take you off into a gothic ‘other world’ with base elements of huge, grandiose symphonic synth layers, haunting, spacey keyboard textures, heavenly choral voices, some Gregorian chanting and thunderous, but well controlled percussion. The atmospheres created are magical to say the least, and musically often encroach on the cosmic space occupied by the likes of early 1970's Tangerine Dream - The title uses the word 'Enthralled', and enthralled you will surely be!

Track 1 opens with vast string synths, tinkling bells, haunting Enigma like flute synths, percussion rumbling thunder, and cascading water, all overlaid by further keyboard textures that create a most magically beautiful atmosphere. This leads directly into the richly symphonic string synths and distant choral voices of track 2, where a vast stabbing drum beat filters into the mix and increases in volume as it rises through the huge sound collage of voices and synths, and flows straight into early 1970's cosmic Tangerine Dream territory. This piece unfolds and develops into track 3, where Gregorian chants and ringing bell chimes flow into a vast wall of bass synths which wells up from the depths, and then on to the end of this brief, but beautiful setting. Track 4 opens with a distant layer of synths and electronics – all very spacey and delicately thunderous, then it moves into a passage of slow drumbeats, haunting keyboards, buzzing electronics and added synth layers, creating a truly epic feel of grand, gothic, electronic, symphonic music that is perfect in execution and dynamics. This leads into a very symphonic space synth music passage that swells on through thirteen very full-sounding minutes to its conclusion. Track 5 is a short piece before you enter the final twenty-seven minutes of tracks 6 and 7 that close the album. Here you enter a world of rhythm-less synths, choral voices and Mellotron-like sounds that take you right back to the heady days of the '74-era Tangerine Dream, specifically the legendary Royal Albert Hall concert where the vast improvised layers of synthesizer sound soared all round the building to majestic effect. This music has the same effect with very similar sonic properties - A brilliant end to a brilliant CD!

Weight: 150.00 g