INTIUATANA

'Intiuatana' - Senmuth (5/10)

Produced as a partial soundtrack to a documentary about the culture of Peru, Senmuth's 'Intiuatana' is an instrumental tribute to this culture. Although the music of this man has had a firm base in Middle-Eastern and Indian tradition, this album sees the prolific Russian composer travel to the other side of the globe with his sound, and make a piece of music that attempts to put this particular culture into the sense of an art form. While 'Intiuatana' may have very well been a good soundtrack to whatever documentary it scored, it is surprising how similar this music is to Senmuth's other, Eastern-based ethnic albums, and much of the music here feels a bit too scattered to provide an engaging experience on it's own.

While the music here does undeniably grow with a few listens, the fact and feeling remains that the ideas Senmuth puts into 'Intiuatana' are like butter spread over too much bread; many of Senmuth's musical innovations (often stretching through an entire song, or more) end up sounding stale before long. The main ingredient in the music here is that of the flute; it takes up the reigns where the sitar or electric guitar usually would, and runs with the torch throughout most of the album's eleven, wandering tracks.

To the album's benefit however, the music does fit in well with Peruvian and other Latin American ancient cultures. Although there are some electric guitars and electronic atmospherics put into play in a few parts, much of the music seems to take the listener into a tribal ritual of sorts, with hypnotic percussion and pan flutes abounding in the mix. The songwriting is generally pretty mediocre and feels a bit uninspired, but the arrangement of the music and instrumentation makes it an album that's worth a listen for anyone interested in the concept, or style.

This time Senmuth crosses the Ocean and goes to South and Central America. The opener "Cheqaytag" was the soundtrack of "Eto Pravda"(This is True), a documentary presented at the Fargo film festival in 2007. This track makes me think to Pink Floyd's Obscured By Clouds (the title track) even if the sounds are reasonably different.

"Olayatambo" is an Inca city in Peru. The (synth) pan flute gives a south-american flavour to the music, but it's just an addition to the usual Senmuth's ethno-metal music. Respect to the most ethnic albums, this song is not totally "ambient" as the basses and the percussions are quite powerful. It's one of the rare cases of strong melody in Senmuth's music.

Google says that "Солнечный Камень" means "Sun Stone". Probably it's referring to the famous "door of the Sun". Also this track has a lot of percussions in the foreground and hosts a guitar solo. It belongs more to the industrial-metal branch of Senmuth's music even if the ethnic elements have a huge part. The melody contains those apparently randomic changes of pitch that are typical of this artist.

Also "Palpa" is a place in Peru, close to the Nazca lines. Here is just a 50 seconds filler which is the intro to. "Nazca" that's the following track. I guess that Valery is intrigued by the possibilty that the Nazca lines are signals for the aliens. The track is quite dark and I think it tries to communicate a sense of mystical mistery. The usual Senmuth in few words...

"Tiahuanaco" is another famous dead city. This track has no ethnic elements at all. It fully belongs to the industrial metal side of Senmuth, only it doesn't feature vocals and neither the distortion kit.

Another dead city is "Pikulatka", close to Cuzco. This track is based on percussions and flute but is very dark and can't be considered ethnic or ambient. A jump back to the dark metal athmospheres of the first albums like Izoteri-Ka.

"Karal" is very similar to the previous track: obsessive percussions and flute or pan pipes or what the synth is emulating.

The following track "Temple Of Ten Nis" is a bit less dark, but the structure is the same of the previous two: strong and obsessive percussions to support an instrument thatthis time is not a flute. The sound is similar to a didgeridoo instead. When a melody starts, at minute 3, it quite good. It reminds to Vangelis 1492 soundtrack.

Wikipedia says: Silustani is a pre-Incan burial ground on the shores of Lake Umayo near Puno in Peru. The themes of Metempsychosis and life after death are fundamental in Senmuth's background. So a site of ancient tombs older than 20 centuries is what is needed to inspire one of the best tracks of this album. It still has the defect of being unstructured, specially in the dark melodic line. But the general sensation of weirdness that it transmits is very effective.

The album is closed by "Inti Qori". It's about Shamans., and has elements of many of the previous tracks. The percussions are not too strong and the melody is one more time altered by the changes in the pitch so that it seems that its leading nowhere. However with some attention more a structure can be identified.

This is an average Senmuth's album. I have to say that knowing that it was used for a soundtrack I was expecting something closer to the evocative Internal Images or Planetary Dust instead of this coming back to the sounds of Senmuth's beginnings. 3 full stars but nothing more.