Frédéric D Oberland – Solstices

ZamZam

Incising, incendiary — this new five-track release from Frédéric D Oberland is a feast of heavy synth and desert heat.

The opener “Panspermia – Pneum” inviting you within a growing sustain and the tubular tetras of alarm bells, as the robotic voice of Professor Hawking gives us a bleak outlook of our planet’s future.

Words that ignite on a slow see-sawing sorrow and symphonic scorch, atmospherically crash-landing into the pulsating syncopation of “À Notre Nuit”, its keytoned circles and percussive stutter filling up the canvas in saffron-soaked strokes and feathering accents. Suddenly ripping out extra headroom on effect-smeared saxophone and white-crested electronics that slush around your head nailed in daggered diode.

The beefy drone of “Quatre Épaves d’Acier” trembling your speakers in layered up magnificence. A soundscape that regally roughs you up in crafted distortion scenically flooding over an event horizon, opening out into a live slice of action called “Worst Case Scenario”, its driven repeats etched in elasticated bounce and spire-spun inclines. A spiral-spat union of needled waves energetically swarming your head, full of impulsive free-falls and baited focus finally greeted in audience cheers.

An in the flesh taste that accumulates on another, featuring Awled Fayala on Egyptian mizmar that took place in a Tunisian butcher’s market. A monster of a sound called “Cosmos Bou Dellif 2.3” that takes things satisfyingly stratospheric. A drone-scooped sizzle on darting darbouka and rasping melodies side-swiped in grainy gravities and Tusken moan.

Solstices is a noisy generosity of spirit that passionately glows.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-